Michael Levin is a synthetic biologist at Tufts University who believes that asking questions about “life” is a fruitless project. Instead, he argues that we ought to be trying to understand the emergence of cognition - a feature that he believes appears long before cells emerge. As part of this project, Levin has started to pull on a series of threads woven through the origin of life debate that seem to show basic elements of thinking systems - habituation, sensitization, conditioning - can be found in simple physical networks. We dig into how these systems work, what they reveal about life, and how his approach to understanding nature resolves a lot of biological paradoxes. PATREON https://www.patreon.com/c/demystifysci PARADIGM DRIFT https://demystifysci.com/paradigm-drift-show HOMEBREW MUSIC - Check out our new album! Hard Copies (Vinyl): FREE SHIPPING https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/products/vinyl-lp-secretary-of-nature-everything-is-so-good-here Streaming: https://secretaryofnature.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-so-good-here #cognition, #bioelectric, #emergent , #complexsystems, #neuroscience, #regenerativemedicine , #origins, #philosophypodcast , #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast MERCH: Rock some DemystifySci gear : https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/ AMAZON: Do your shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/3YyoT98 DONATE: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@UCqV4_7i9h1_V7hY48eZZSLw@demystifysci RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss MAILING LIST: https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671