In this podcast I talk to Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington about the mathematics of microbes. Bergstrom is a mathematical biologist who probes the abstract nature of life itself. We talk about how life uses information, and how information can evolve. But in Bergstrom's hands, these abstractions shed light on very real concerns in medicine, from the way that viruses jam our immune system's communication systems to to the best ways to fight antibiotic resistance. Publications: Mapping Change in Large Networks [html] [pdf] The transmission sense of information [pdf] Dealing with deception in biology [pdf]