

Thoughtforms Life
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 intelligence and agency emerge from the most fundamental levels of nature.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Apr 11, 2025 • 1h
How Does It Know? Bioelectricity as Memory Medium, Cognitive Glue, & Path to Regenerative Medicine
This is a ~1 hour talk on the field of developmental bioelectricity from a perspective of cognitive science and the homology between mechanisms of self-assembly of somatic and brain-based intelligence.
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Apr 8, 2025 • 56min
Uncovering Electrodynamic Design Principles of Living Cells
This is a ~1 hour talk by Jack Tuszynski (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tuszy%C5%84ski, https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/jackt) on electrical and electromagnetic properties of microtubules.
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Mar 22, 2025 • 57min
Discussion with Alexey Tolchinsky and Thomas Pollak
This is a ~1 hour conversation with Alexey Tolchinsky (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexey-Tolchinsky), a clinical psychologist and Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University, Center for Professional Psychology, and Thomas Pollak (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6171-0810), a neuropsychiatrist and researcher working at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, on the topic of extending concepts from neuroscience to understand cellular behav...
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Mar 21, 2025 • 58min
Conversation with Lauren Ross
This is a ~1 hour discussion with philosopher of science Lauren Ross (https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~rossl/), on the topic of explanation and causation - what does it mean to look for explanations in science, what counts as a good explanation, and how do you know you've got one.
Lauren's book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/explanation-in-biology/743A8C5A6E709B1E348FCD4D005C67B3
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Mar 14, 2025 • 59min
Interview 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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5 snips
Mar 13, 2025 • 33min
Life, Mind, and Computing: A Diverse Intelligence Perspective
Dive into the fascinating intersection of biology, computation, and consciousness. Discover how living systems creatively solve problems and adapt over time. Learn about biobots like anthrobots and xenobots, which blur the lines between biology and technology. Explore anatomical attractors and their roles in species diversity beyond evolution. Plus, ponder the emergent behaviors of these novel entities as we rethink intelligence and adaptability in the natural world.

Mar 11, 2025 • 36min
Cellular 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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Mar 4, 2025 • 1h 12min
Conversation 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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Mar 1, 2025 • 1h 3min
Bioelectric 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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Feb 25, 2025 • 1h 20min
Aastha 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://...
CONNECT WITH ME:
Podcast Website
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The Levin Lab