Our invited Perspective on a bold new hypothesis about the origin of metabolism and life is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. We propose that electric field catalysis at aqueous interfaces allowed protometabolism, the nonenzymatic precursor to modern metabolic network, to emerge on the early Earth. This situation foreshadows the eventual emergence of enzymes, which generate their own electric fields to catalyze the metabolic network. We also discuss the types of autocatalysis that could have allowed the reaction network and the molecules within it to become more complex over time, resulting in the self-referential nature of biology as we know it today. This one had been in the works for nearly three years. Congrats to Noemi and Quentin for helping make this a reality!