When the yogurt took over, we all made the same jokes – “Finally, our rulers will have culture,” “Our society has curdled,” “Our government is now the cream of the crop,” and so on. But when we weren’t laughing about the absurdity of it all, we looked into each others’ eyes with the same unasked question – how did we ever get to the point where we were, in fact, ruled by a dairy product?

This is a short story by an American author John Scalzi, which was adapted into a short cartoon-style film as an episode of the anthology series Love, Death + Robots produced by Blur Studios, and published on Netflix in 2019.

The story is simple: researchers at an institute are working with DNA computing, and use a very advanced strain of their product to graft it onto Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (which is commonly used to ferment yogurt). The yogurt becomes sentient and offers to solve complex humanity’s problems, such as energy and economy issues, but the humans are… well, humans.

While truly short (1000 words, around 6 minutes in film form), the story is half scary, half hilarious, but also poses some what if questions, and at the same time shows us the nature of the struggles of being human.

My favorite quote:

Some of us ask ourselves – not out loud – that if the yogurt was smart enough to give the government a formula to solve its debt problem, wasn’t it also smart enough to realize that human intellectual vanity would keep us from following the formula exactly? . . . And then there’s this. In the last several weeks the yogurt has initiated several space launches. More are scheduled. And in low orbit, something is being built.

I found the topic very interesting and thought provoking, even though it’s somewhat simple in its writing style.