[Intro: solo clarinet, slow and free, then the band kicks in] Oy, oy, oy, the cells have a plan! [Verse 1] Down at Tufts there's a worm in a dish, cut it in three and it grows back the rest. Fallon Durant gave the middle a dose, now it grows two heads, and it keeps growing those. Cut it again in plain water, no drug, two heads again, so the lab dug and dug. [Chorus] Oy, the body is electric, the voltage knows the plan, the cells all hold a pattern, like a map in someone's hand. Michael Levin makes a proposal and the lab puts it to the test, then the frogs and the worms and the tadpoles get to vote on the rest. Hey! Freylekhs for the field! Hey! Freylekhs for the cell! Hey! Nobody edited a gene, and it still turned out well! [Verse 2] Vaibhav Pai found a voltage that means "build an eye", set it on a tadpole's gut, and an eye grew there, oh my. Dany Spencer Adams filmed a face made of light, the voltage map of a face before the face was in sight. With Laura Vandenberg and Levin she scrambled tadpole faces, and the eyes and the jaws moved back to their proper places. [Chorus] Oy, the body is electric, the voltage knows the plan, the cells all hold a pattern, like a map in someone's hand. Michael Levin makes a proposal and the lab puts it to the test, then the frogs and the worms and the tadpoles get to vote on the rest. Hey! Freylekhs for the field! Hey! Freylekhs for the cell! Hey! Nobody edited a gene, and it still turned out well! [Verse 3: faster] Doug Blackiston took some frog skin cells out of the frog, Sam Kriegman and Josh Bongard evolved the shapes inside a computer, then Doug built them by hand with tiny tools, and nothing could be cuter. Xenobots! They swim, they sweep up loose cells in a pile, they heal a little cut, and that's the list, but what a list, what a style! Gizem Gumuskaya took cells from a human airway, anthrobots rolled on a scratch in a dish of neurons, and the neurons grew across the way. [Bridge: slow doina, clarinet and voice] Santosh Manicka models networks made of voltage, not of wire, Léo Pio-Lopez reads a body as inference, aiming higher, Patrick McMillen writes collective intelligence across every scale, oy, and the papers keep on coming, like a long, long tale. [Verse 4: the friends from outside] Chris Fields writes with Levin about the spaces minds can roam, Karl Friston brought free energy, a cell knowing its place, its home, Richard Watson says evolution learns the way a mind learns, Adam Goldstein sorted numbers, and the numbers took surprising turns. [Final Chorus: double time, everyone shouting the heys] Oy, the body is electric, the voltage knows the plan, the cells all hold a pattern, like a map in someone's hand. Michael Levin makes a proposal and the lab puts it to the test, then the frogs and the worms and the tadpoles get to vote on the rest. Hey! Freylekhs for the field! Hey! Freylekhs for the cell! Hey! Nobody edited a gene, and it still turned out well! [Outro: clarinet laugh, one last hey] Oy, the cells have a plan! Hey!
