Rise of the Prokaryotes

Video description: Trailer for “Rise of the Prokaryotes.” 42 seconds. Title card with the words “Podcast Episode” and “Genre: Science Fiction” is displayed at top. Story tagline is displayed at bottom. Tagline reads, “Why and how are the world’s bacterial species suddenly banding together?” The title card and tagline fade. Digital drawing. Three people at right gathered before a monitor at left displaying the planet Earth. An inset on the monitor, seen at a bias displays a scattering of circles or spheres in front of a hazy mass. A few papers lie on the long table supporting the monitor. An office chair is pulled out from the table. A man at bottom foreground, seen from shoulders up, has his hand raised to his chin. Beside him, directly in front of the monitor, stands a woman with arm outstretched to point to the image. Beside her, and behind the pulled-out chair, stands another woman, right arm crossed before her, left arm bent with her hand covering the bottom of her face. Subtitles appear in time with music and narration at the bottom: “There’s a bacterial biofilm condensing in the atmosphere. The point of attachment can be traced to the Earth, but the films are reaching up into the air through their extracellular matrix and past the troposphere, the stratosphere, and further still. It’s so delicate that planes are flying right through it, but so resilient that those planes are causing little disruption and no dispersion. The species composition changes to adapt to the specific environment that portion of the film is occupying. And the biofilm has actually reached space.” Story title appears at top as the image blurs. Text box appears at center displaying the words, “Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, and so on. Or listen on my Podcast page at storyfeather.com.”