#91 Rethinking Biological Agency & What Really Matters in Life with Charlie Munford and the Agential Biology Institute

Send a love messageCharlie has been gathering some of the best scientists in the world to rethink what agency is together and form new connections outside the usual academic constraintsJoin Andrea in NYC this week here.Today's guest is Charlie Munford, president of the Agential Biology Institute, and he has been gathering some of the best scientists and philosophers in the world together to rethink agency. Andrea and Charlie have a personal, meandering conversation that moves from family life stories to foundational questions in biology, education, evolution, and meaning. Munford recounts growing up in Mississippi, wilderness canoe trips, Yale literature and polo, organic agriculture studies in Cuba, farming and a New Orleans wild boar sausage business, and a later personal crisis that pushed him into researching chronic disease and biological agency. He argues mainstream gene-centered biology assumes blind variation, but evidence for inherited acquired changes and directional adaptation (horizontal gene transfer, planaria pattern memory, small-RNA inheritance in worms and mammals, maternal grooming effects, genetic assimilation) suggests a missing causal layer and universal cellular learning. They discuss natural selection, Darwin and Lamarck, Barbara McClintock, a Karl Popper “active Darwinism” lecture, ABI’s testable hypotheses, and openness, creativity, and care.00:00 Welcome and Brooklyn Invite04:20 Meet Charlie Munford04:35 Banana Couch Story05:49 Kids and Creativity08:48 Mississippi to Yale Adventures15:17 Farming Cuba and Sausage Business18:40 Crisis Sparks Biology Questions21:38 Agential Biology Explained30:04 Lamarck Darwin and Natural Selection36:45 Evidence for Inherited Change46:21 McClintock and Popper Teaser47:51 Cells Sense Not Code48:36 Genes Aren't Difference Makers49:45 Popper Versus Selfish Gene54:06 Agency Without Theology55:11 Horizontal Gene Transfer58:34 Three Testable Agency Ideas01:00:00 Popper And Falsification01:06:05 Episolution And Cellular Mind01:12:58 Harmonic Resonance And Sleep01:17:12 Attention And Surprise Learning01:20:33 Personal Journey And Meaning01:26:24 Love Openness And Invitation01:30:16 Otter Story FarewellAndrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her approach here throughout.Support the showBuy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea HiottSign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.Please rate and review with love. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.