Stefan Helmreich is Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology at MIT. He is author of Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (California, 2009) and Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond (Princeton, 2016). His essays have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Anthropologist, The Wire, Cabinet, Public Culture, and BOMB.