War of the Worlds

For Movie of the Week, we are choosing Steven Spielberg’s 2005 cinematic adaptation of H.G. Well’s famous novel, The War of the Worlds, to parallel this week’s interview topic on “parasitic” biofilms. In the story’s great twist, the superior microorganisms living in the human body ultimately bring about the demise of the Martian invaders.

The book and its various adaptations—radio, film, television, and more—provide many aspects to ponder about the beneficial and potentially detrimental cohabitation of the human species with microbial colonies. Who is colonizing whom? And can we survive apart from symbiosis?