In this fascinating episode of StarTalk Special Edition, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O'Reilly and Chuck Nice explore the cutting-edge field of Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI) with neuroscientist Dr. Brett Kagan, Chief Scientific Officer at Cortical Labs in Melbourne.

Dr. Kagan reveals how his team is growing functional brain cells in laboratory dishes and integrating them with technology to create a new form of intelligence. Unlike traditional approaches that introduce technology to biology (like Neuralink), Kagan's work flips the script by bringing biology to technology.

The conversation covers remarkable achievements, including teaching these neural networks to play Pong through embodied intelligence systems. Dr. Kagan explains how these biological systems can learn within minutes - showing capabilities that tradit ...