Hey, it's Floral Lichtman. You're listening to Science Friday.

On today's show, zooming in on the sophisticated secret societies, living around and within us.

They've been here for billions of years. They do evolution on a much faster scale.

So they've had time to occupy every niche on the planet and to optimize.

As humans, I think it's tempting to imagine ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. I mean, we talk,

we make art, we build cool and transformative things, and we've changed the planet in profound ways. But there are life forms that have been on this planet evolving a lot longer than us, like way longer. Bacteria go back billions of years. What if they have come up with sophisticated playbooks that we just don't yet understand?

Could they have their own culture, their own language, their own complex societies that we're

ignorant of, even though they're playing out right under and perhaps even in our noses?

Those are some of the questions my next guest has been looking into for more than 30

years. Dr. Bonnie Bassler is a microbiologist and runs a lab at Princeton University. She was

awarded the National Medal of Science this year. Bonnie, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks,

Flora. I'm delighted to be here. What did you think of that intro, Bonnie, about how much of what

bacteria are doing do you think we're unaware of Bonnie, about how much of what bacteria are doing do you think we're unaware of?

I think a lot of what bacteria are doing we're unaware of. We know a lot about the parts, the parts list that make bacteria and other organisms.

But the behaviors, the sophisticated, magical, astounding things bacteria can do, that's been the focus of a lot of work for the past few decades. And in that realm, I think we're only beginning to understand the complexity.

What about language? Is there an argument that bacteria have language? Well, since that's my life's work, I would say yes. And so,

of course, bacteria, right, so just to set the tone a little bit or set the stage a little bit,

of course, bacteria are microscopic. They're single cells, right? You can't see them with your

eyes. To see them, you need to look under a microscope, right? So they don't have language the

way you and I do. They

don't talk with words, but what the field has shown is that they actually communicate with

chemicals. So they use chemicals as their words, and they use those chemicals to count how many

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