Thoughtforms Life

By Michael Levin

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 int... more

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FAQs about Thoughtforms Life:

How many episodes does Thoughtforms Life have?

The podcast currently has 204 episodes available.

Thoughtforms Life episodes:

July 11, 2025Engineering Agential Materials
This is a ~18 min talk plus ~10 min Q&A on a top-down approach to bioengineering and robotics that I gave at the Biohybrid Robotics Symposium in Switzerland in July 2025 (https://biohybrid-robotics.com/).
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28min
July 09, 2025Discussion with Michael Johnson
This is a ~55 minute conversation with Michael Johnson (https://t.co/YxAOZif0V2) covering topics of spectrum of consciousness down to the cell (and below) level, implicit memory and cellular pixels of experience, Platonic space, symmetry breaking, and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation in systems.
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56min
July 07, 2025Unconventional Selves - a Diverse Intelligence Perspective on Consciousness by Michael Levin
"Unconventional selves in novel spaces, scales, and embodiments - a diverse intelligence perspective on a continuum of cognition and consciousness" is a ~1 hour 12 min talk I gave at a conference on consciousness (https://www.hardproblem.it/), as it relates to our work on diverse intelligence and unconventional cognition.
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1h 12min
July 05, 2025Nothing in Biology Makes Sense without Teleology
This is a deliberately provocative talk (~1 hour 20 minutes) I gave on teleology (a pretty taboo subject in a lot of the life sciences) delivered at Caltech. I try to go step by step and show the philosophical background of how I think about goal-directedness in physically embodied agents (cells and tissues etc.) and then the data - classic examples and new discoveries that this framework allowed us to make.
Editing by https://x.com/DNAMediaEditing
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1h 19min
June 28, 2025Discussion with Murray Shanahan
This is a ~25 minute discussion with Murray Shanahan (https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mpsha/) on topics following up on his talk in our Center (https://youtu.be/ZlKc3ebLgEI?si=Tmq5gOwVDi4t-pip).
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26min
June 26, 2025Discussion between Adam Safron, Max Shen, and Michael Levin
This is a ~1 hour discussion with Adam Safron (https://www.adamsafron.com/) and Max Shen (https://www.maxkshen.com/home), and Michael Levinabout diverse intelligence and its relevance for pain.
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1h
June 25, 2025Discussion with David Spivak
This is a ~1 hour discussion with mathematician David Spivak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spivak) about issues related to goal-directedness and some puzzles around mathematical vs. physical constants (see https://thoughtforms.life/why-the-tight-clustering-of-mathematical-constants/ for more details on that question).
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58min
June 24, 2025Endogenous Bioelectrical Networks: An Interface to Somatic Intelligence
This is a ~55 min talk by Michael Levin "Endogenous Bioelectrical Networks: an interface to somatic intelligence for regenerative medicine", going over the state of the art in developmental bioelectricity in the context of collaborating with the cellular collective intelligence for applications in birth defects, regeneration, and cancer. It has some new material beyond what my recent talks on this topic have covered.

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51min
June 16, 2025Against Mind-Blindness
This is a new ~1 hour talk by me on the concept of diverse intelligence, and morphogenesis as a model system with which to practice identifying and communicating with unconventional minds. This is a bit different than previous ones because I explicitly go over examples of how some of our various data on bioelectrics addresses each of several key properties of cellular collectives as *cognitive agents* navigating anatomical morphospace.
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57min
June 10, 2025Chemical AI: An Unconventional Strategy for Mimicking Biological Intelligence - Pier Luigi Gentili
This is a ~1 hour total presentation by Pier Luigi Gentili (https://www.pierluigigentili.com/) and brainstorming session about chemical intelligence and its relationship to the broader field of diverse intelligence.
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59min

FAQs about Thoughtforms Life:

How many episodes does Thoughtforms Life have?

The podcast currently has 204 episodes available.

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