Home / Lex Fridman Podcast / #486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

Nov 30, 2025

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Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep486-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, ...

Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems.

Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep486-sc

See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.

Transcript:

https://lexfridman.com/michael-levin-2-transcript

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EPISODE LINKS:

Michael Levin’s X: https://x.com/drmichaellevin

Michael Levin’s Website: https://drmichaellevin.org

Michael Levin’s Papers: https://drmichaellevin.org/publications/

– Biological Robots: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00880

– Classical Sorting Algorithms: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05375

– Aging as a Morphostasis Defect: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38636560/

– TAME: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10346

– Synthetic Living Machines: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abf1571

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OUTLINE:

(00:00) – Introduction

(00:29) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections

(10:09) – Biological intelligence

(18:42) – Living vs non-living organisms

(23:55) – Origin of life

(27:40) – The search for alien life (on Earth)

(1:00:44) – Creating life in the lab – Xenobots and Anthrobots

(1:13:46) – Memories and ideas are living organisms

(1:27:26) – Reality is an illusion: The brain is an interface to a hidden reality

(2:13:13) – Unexpected Intelligence in sorting algorithms

(2:38:51) – Can aging be reversed?

(2:42:41) – Mind uploading

(3:01:22) – Alien intelligence

(3:16:17) – Advice for young people

(3:22:46) – Questions for AGI

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