Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life
30 Nov 2025
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 CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact 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 SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex CodeRabbit: AI-powered code reviews. Go to https://coderabbit.ai/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex UPLIFT Desk: Standing desks and office ergonomics. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/lex Miro: Online collaborative whiteboard platform. Go to https://miro.com/ MasterClass: Online classes from world-class experts. Go to https://masterclass.com/lexpod 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
Full Episode
The following is a conversation with Michael Levin, his second time on the podcast. He is one of the most fascinating and brilliant biologists and scientists I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with.
He and his labs at Tufts University study and build biological systems that help us understand the nature of intelligence, agency, memory, consciousness, and life in all of its forms here on Earth and beyond. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. It is, in fact, the best way to support this podcast.
We've got Shopify for selling stuff online, Code Rabbit for AI-powered code review, Element for electrolytes, Uplift Desk for my favorite office desks that I'm sitting behind right now, Miro for brainstorming ideas with your team, and Masterclass for learning stuff from incredible people. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads.
I try to make them interesting, but if you must skip, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. To get in touch with me, for whatever reason, go to lexfreeman.com slash contact. All right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store.
With an engineering stack that utilizes the beauty and the elegance of Ruby on Rails that DHH so beautifully articulated in my conversations with him. I continue to tune in to DHH's tweets and posts on X. Just a beautiful human being. And it's just nice to know that he's a big supporter of Shopify.
Him and Toby have been close for years, and it's just nice to know that great human beings and great engineers can create great products that also make a lot of money and also bring a lot of usefulness to the world. I will forever be celebrating Shopify, not just for the services that they create, but for the people behind the scenes that are building it.
So sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Lex. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Lex to take your business to the next level today. Speaking of beautiful code and incredible people, this episode is also brought to you by CodeRabbit, a platform that provides AI-powered code reviews directly within your terminal.
The thing I can definitively recommend especially is the CLI version of CodeRabbit. It's the most installed AI app on GitHub and GitLab. 2 million repositories in review. 13 million pull requests reviewed. Basically, a lot of you listening to this know how to generate a bunch of code. Some of it is AI slop. Some of it is on the borderline. But what CodeRabbitCLI does is...
is, as they put it, vibe check your code. So they do the review process to make sure you go from that AI-generated code to something that's actually production-ready by helping you catch errors. And it supports all programming languages. You absolutely must go now. Install CodeRabbit CLI. at coderabbit.ai slash lex. That's coderabbit.ai slash lex. Please go support them. Try it out.
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