So that's something that we then talked to Pia about.

My name's Pia Senn, and I'm a fourth-year PhD candidate at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and I research bacteriophages in extreme environments, and I'm interested in the natural dynamics of their co-evolution.

The thing with microbes that I find really cool is-- and I know it's kind of controversial to personify them sometimes when we try to understand microbial ecology 'cause they are not people, they do not have brains, and I think that's valid.

But also, I do kind of think that when we personify microbes to some extent and think about how microbial ecology might be working, we get a lot of insight into things that we wouldn't otherwise be thinking about, and I think that's what makes microbiology so creative to me, and that feels like you're writing or solving a puzzle or, like, doing something else that's creative.

Can you give us an example?

Like, even microbes communicate with each other.

It's like that as a concept is anthropomorphizing when we think about communication.

Like, the word communicate ultimately, yes, we can think about transfer of molecules, but to some extent, we also think about, like, us talking to other people.