The Human Brain Is Incredible and Special

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How special is the human brain in this full context of biology? Yeah. There's no getting away from the fact that the human brain allows us to do things that we could not do without it. We have to be really careful about treating the human brain as if it was some kind of like sharp binary category, you know, you are or you aren't. I don't believe that exists. It tells us that things that are not quite human brains may also have important cognitive status.

Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Michael’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin
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Michael’s Papers:
Biological Robots: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00880
Synthetic Organisms: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2021.2005863
Limb Regeneration: https://science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2164

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:40) – Embryogenesis
(14:08) – Xenobots: biological robots
(27:55) – Sense of self
(37:27) – Multi-scale competency architecture
(48:58) – Free will
(58:27) – Bioelectricity
(1:11:44) – Planaria
(1:23:33) – Building xenobots
(1:47:08) – Unconventional cognition
(2:11:39) – Origin of evolution
(2:18:42) – Synthetic organisms
(2:25:27) – Regenerative medicine
(2:29:14) – Cancer suppression
(2:33:15) – Viruses
(2:38:28) – Cognitive light cones
(2:43:03) – Advice for young people
(2:47:47) – Death
(2:57:17) – Meaning of life