In his new Nature podcast, science journalist Geoff Marsh talks to the winner of the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators 2021, Tanmay Bharat, about his award-winning work on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its particular extracellular matrix in biofilms. Tanmay Bharat is Group Leader at the William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, UK.