Abstract
In dynamic scientific fields, two decades can be an eternity, with technical and conceptual advances leading to drastically changed landscapes and paradigms. Noted natural philosopher Ferris Bueller once opined, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t look around once in a while, you could miss it”, and at the 20-year anniversary of BMC Biology, it is worth a “look around” at the field of evolutionary protistology. Things look quite differently today than they did when BMC Biology was founded.