Episodes

  • Bioelectricity: A Bridge Between Physics and Cognition, by Way of Biology

    Bioelectricity: A Bridge Between Physics and Cognition, by Way of Biology
    Sep 23 2025
    This is a ~54 minute talk I gave, titled ""Bioelectricity: a bridge between physics and cognition, by way of biology", at the National Institute of Health Interest Group "Quantum SIG" (https://oir.nih.gov/sigs/qis-quantum-sensing-biology-interest-group). My talk doesn't contain any quantum biology content per se, but I discuss the idea of top-down control and cognition all the way down, from abstract mental goals to molecular pathways, with bioelectricity as a tractable medium for the communicat...

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    54 mins
  • Intrinsic Motivation in Evolved, Engineered, and Hybrid Systems

    Intrinsic Motivation in Evolved, Engineered, and Hybrid Systems
    Sep 20 2025
    This is a ~1 hour talk I gave at the Oxford Robotics Institute called "Intrinsic motivation in evolved, engineered, and hybrid systems: the interface of biophysics, computer science, and behavioral science". It covers our work from the perspective of motivations - what are they (in various unconventional agents, spaces, and scales), how can we predict/change them, and where they "come from".

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    57 mins
  • Against Mind-Blindness: Recognizing and Communicating with Agential Materials by Michael Levin

    Against Mind-Blindness: Recognizing and Communicating with Agential Materials by Michael Levin
    Sep 2 2025
    This is a 1 hour 11 minute talk by me called "Against Mind-Blindness: recognizing and communicating with Agential Materials and Beyond". It is a slightly longer, updated version of this talk from last month, containing a bit of new material and a somewhat differently-ordered presentation.

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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Biological and Technological Information Processing

    Biological and Technological Information Processing
    Aug 18 2025
    This is a ~35 minute talk on commonalities and differences between biological and technological information processing, and the implications for AI (given at the AGI-25 conference in Iceland). The full program, including Hananel Hazan's talk (which is the 2nd half of mine), is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdftA37yZJw.

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    36 mins
  • Unconventional Embodiments of Consciousness: A Diverse Intelligence Research Program - Michael Levin

    Unconventional Embodiments of Consciousness: A Diverse Intelligence Research Program - Michael Levin
    Aug 6 2025
    This is a ~46 minute talk given at a conference on consciousness, presenting my lab's data on cognition in body organs outside the brain and then some speculations about the mind-body connection more generally (fleshing out my Platonic space model with symmetries between brain:mind relationships and mathematics:physics relationships).

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    47 mins
  • Against Mind-blindness: Recognizing and Communicating with Agential Materials and Beyond - Michael Levin

    Against Mind-blindness: Recognizing and Communicating with Agential Materials and Beyond - Michael Levin
    Jul 22 2025
    This is a ~1 hour 7 minute talk I gave at the SEMF Interdisciplinary School (July 2025, https://semf.org.es/school2025/#speakers-container) on agency ways to think about expanding our ability to detect and communicate with unconventional minds. The same talk but with a lengthy Q&A will be up on the SEMF website.

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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Beyond Complexity & Emergence: Taming Multiscale Competency in Agential Materials

    Beyond Complexity & Emergence: Taming Multiscale Competency in Agential Materials
    Jul 19 2025
    This is a ~54 minute talk given at a workshop on complexity. Many of the examples are the same ones I often talk about but this talk is focused on explaining how biology deals with complexity, and ways to think about complex patterns of form and behavior beyond the conventional approach of emergence.

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    54 mins
  • Engineering Agential Materials

    Engineering Agential Materials
    Jul 11 2025
    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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    27 mins