WEBVTT - From the Vault: Cancer and Evolution with Kat Arney 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.600 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.320 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.680 going into the vault for an older episode of the show. 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:18.040 This one originally published on July and this is an 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.079 interview I did with Cat Arnie, the author of a 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.520 book about cancer and evolution, last summer. This was an 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:30.400 interesting interview, so we hope you enjoy it. Welcome to 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.760 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.000 Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.360 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.840 today we're bringing you another interview that I conducted last 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:51.760 week while Robert was taking a break from work. That's right. 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.440 Once a year, I like to bury myself in some 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.680 sacred imported soil and allow my my body to break 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.480 down and the reconstitute itself so that I can rise 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.520 once more and be up to the challenges of podcasting 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:08.960 in this day and age. Today we are going to 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.360 be sharing the conversation that I had with the British 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:17.240 geneticist and science communicator Cat Arnie talking about her upcoming book, 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:21.480 Rebel Cell Cancer Evolution in the New Science of life's 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.320 oldest betrayal, so a little bit of biographical information. Cat 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.840 Arnie hosts the Genetics Unzipped podcast and she holds a 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.120 PhD in developmental genetics from Cambridge University. She was a 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:37.720 key part of the science communications team at Cancer Research 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:42.039 UK from two thousand four to co founding the charity's 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.080 award winning science blog and acting as a principal media spokesperson. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:50.680 She's also the author of Hurting Hemmingway's Cats, Understanding How 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.520 Our Genes Work and How to Code a Human and 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.320 she's written for Wired, The Daily Mail, Nature Mosaic, New 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.920 Scientist and more, and presented many BBC radio programs. You 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.400 can find Cat Arnie on Twitter at at cat Underscore 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:11.079 Arnie a r in e Y and I should note 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.400 that the book is coming out at different times in 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.120 the UK in the US, so Rebel Cell can be 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:20.320 found in the UK starting on August six, and then 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.640 in the US. I believe it's coming out on September 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.440 twenty nine, but you can go ahead and preorder it online. 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:27.720 All right, Well, I'm I am in a rare position 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.480 here because I am just like the listeners out there. 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.480 I have not heard this interview yet myself. So I 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.520 am excited, uh to to to listen in as she 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:42.840 sheds light on this, uh, this fascinating topic. Cat Arnie, 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.200 thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.400 Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. It's 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:50.120 a pleasure to have someone on the show who has 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:52.160 not only written a great book, but you are actually 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.240 a podcaster yourself. So you're so you're used to this 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.160 whole game talking into the mic with alone by yourself 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.200 in a room. Yeah. I've been making the Jannetix Unzipped podcast. 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:03.520 I do have to say that through this time, we've 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.560 we've deliberately made it a COVID free zone, so it 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:10.480 is currently a COVID free genetics podcast. So that's been 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.240 that's been a nice thing to do during during this time, 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:15.000 I got to say I was listening to one of 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.480 your episodes of the gene Lex un Zip podcast, the 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.600 one about Maud Sly and Pauline Grows, which I thought 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:23.440 was fantastic. Of course it connects to the book that 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.800 we're going to be talking about today. So personal endorsement 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.480 from me of your podcast. Don't really like it? Thank you. Yeah, 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:32.600 it's really fun. We we alternate. We do sort of 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.160 interviews with scientists who are working now in genetics. But 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.520 I also really like to go back through those stories 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.840 and dig out, particularly the untold women who were often 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:43.560 they're doing the work, doing lots and lots of stuff, 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:48.480 incredibly detailed observations and breeding experiments, and then basically didn't 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.920 really get the credit for it, because until the middle 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.120 of the twentieth century or later, women weren't really respected 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.240 as a scientist. So it's it's just a wonderful expliration 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.800 you come up with all these incredible people, although of 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.360 in the early century lots them do turn out to 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:07.040 be eugenicists, but different podcast I think, yeah, So I 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.760 think maybe a good place to start when talking about cancer. 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.520 Of course, your book is about cancer, and specifically a 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.600 lot about the genetics of cancer. I wanted to maybe 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:20.000 start off by talking about this strange kind of gut 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:26.400 feeling or almost superstition that somehow, unlike other diseases, cancer 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:31.560 is a modern synthetic, uh, some kind of perversion in 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:35.560 some way against nature, and that it sometimes comes with 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.599 this odd edge of moralism, that cancer is not just unfortunate, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.920 but it's somehow decadent and an indicator of something wrong 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.840 with our age. Parts of your book indicate to me 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.520 that you've come up against this kind of thinking a 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.480 lot as well. What do you think this sort of 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:57.200 thinking signifies. I think it's absolutely fascinating. Cancer is not 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:01.320 a new disease, and that really became abundant clear to me. So, 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.839 just as a little bit of background, I spent twelve 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.520 years working at Cancer Research UK, the UK's biggest cancer charity, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.359 answering lots of questions from the public, and all the 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.280 time this question comes up. It's like, why me, isn't 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.760 it just a modern disease, Oh, it's all this stuff 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.320 in the air, or it's stress. What what is it? 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.680 And you start to look into what cancer really is, 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:26.960 and it's it's ancient. It's hardwired into our biology because 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.600 it's just cells doing what they're going to do. Cells multiplying, 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:35.160 cells jostling for space, cells competing with the cells around them, 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.160 obeying the processes of evolution. And so when you really 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.279 start to look, it's not surprising that you find cancer 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.039 going all the way back through human history, all the 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.320 way back through the history of animal life on this planet. 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:51.600 But at the same time, when people start to become 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.120 aware of cancer as a disease. They start to ask 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.120 questions about, well, where did this come from? Why has 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.320 it affected me? You start to get the Greek as 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.440 people like Hippocrates who were writing about cancers in their 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.440 patients and saying, well, what has caused it? It must 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.280 be the gods, It must be the humors. Something is 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.320 out of whack in here. And then you start to 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.400 get the slightly more religious thing of well it is 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.240 it's fins visited on us. It is something to do 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.480 with immorality, modern living. And then you bring up to 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.920 today this we don't necessarily have such a strong religious 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.240 view of it, but certainly the idea of almost wellness 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.760 as a religion. You've done something toxic to yourself and 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.599 that's why you you now have cancer, and you look 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.360 back at the history of cancer as a biological phenomenon, 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.080 and that's simply not true. You know. It's it's basically 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:45.560 like the dark side of life, rather than anything that 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.920 we have particularly brought on ourselves in our modern life. Yeah, 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:50.720 that's one of the things I really loved about your 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.359 book was the way you how you show cancer to 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:58.560 be so fundamentally integrated with with with life itself or 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:02.880 I guess, multi cellular life life um. And so so 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.479 maybe we should focus on on a couple of these 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.479 ideas in particular. One of them, I guess, is the 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.360 idea of modernity, right, the idea that that cancer is 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.880 something that was very rare until recently. You make an 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.440 argument against and people have argued this, but you make 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:20.880 an argument against this in the book, and you cite 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:25.520 some both some reasoning about why a lot of cancers 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.240 wouldn't necessarily show up in the kinds of remains we 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.640 can examine, and then pointing out examples that we do 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.760 find in fact in the human record and physical remains 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:38.760 of human society and prehistory. Yeah, it's the classic thing 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.720 in biology that you find what you're looking for, and 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.720 people have not been looking for signs of cancer in 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.720 ancient remains. And the thing about cancer is that that 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.000 when you're thinking about ancient remains that we find mostly 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:54.520 you're talking about bones, and particularly when you get very ancient, 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.960 you're talking about fossilized bones. And not every cancer leaves 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.600 its trace in the bones. So when you're thinking about 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.280 cancers that affect the soft tissue, you may never see 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.640 the traces of a cancer that killed someone. Also, you know, 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:14.600 ancient remains don't turn up in beautifully aged, matched structured populations, 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:16.760 so you can say, oh, this is exactly the population 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:18.960 that was alive at the time. This is exactly the 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.679 number of cancers in this population. I think some people 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.960 have argued that the fact that cancers are rare in 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:31.040 ancient humans is an argument that cancer was very, very rare. 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:34.400 But I slightly feel the other way around. I feel 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.080 like the fact that the more people start looking for 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:41.800 cancers in human and animal remains from from way way back, 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.600 the more cancers they start to find suggest that it 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.600 was more common. We will never know how how common 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.600 it was, because you can't do, you know, a lovely 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.840 epidemiological study on the sort of stuff that you can 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:56.360 get out of the ground. You get what you get 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:59.600 and you get on with it, basically. But I do 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.600 think that cancer is not an exclusively modern disease. I 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.160 will say, certainly it is more common as we live longer. 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:09.880 So another of the things I go into you later 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.080 in the book is the idea that there's almost a 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.720 sort of a shooting up point. After you have got 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:18.560 to a certain age, your risk of cancer does significantly 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.959 go up. So if you think about ancient populations when 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.199 there were many, many, many more things that we're going 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.439 to kill you, your chances of getting to an age 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.199 where you could dive cancer before something else got you 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:35.520 were smaller. So it's not surprising we find fewer ancient 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:39.320 remains with cancer. But when you think about some children 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.280 have been found with types of cancer that are very 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:44.920 very rare in populations, and the fact that we have 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:47.720 found them at all suggests that this is a disease 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.360 that has always been with us, and it's not exclusively 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.719 a confection of modernity. It's it's basically, you know, it 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.960 is with us and always has been. And what about 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.720 the part of the misconception that views cancer is something 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:06.720 that is uniquely kind of human and maybe associated with uh, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.440 with the synthetic products of human industry and all that. Like, 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:13.640 this ties into the idea that sharks don't get cancer, right, 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:18.240 that there's a widespread belief that for some reason, animals 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.360 that don't engage, you know, don't live in cities and 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.840 drive cars and eat processed food and stuff, won't get cancer. 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.400 But they do. Yeah, this really blew my mind. I 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.280 can see over on my bookshelf. I'm so tempted to 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.080 go and grab it. But there's a book where someone 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.920 has gone through all the different species that have been 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.800 known to have cancer in In some cases it's many examples, 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.200 in some it's just a few, but it's pages and 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.840 pages and pages. Is everything from like odd wolves to zebras, 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:51.160 and almost every branch of the animal kingdom develops cancer. 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.720 There are a couple of really weird exceptions. So one 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.680 is comb jellies. Comb jellyfish don't seem to get cancer, 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:04.280 never been detected. And also sponges really weirdly resistant to sponges. 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.880 There's this guy in in Arizona, guy called Carlo Malei, 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.920 who is zapping sponges with enormous amounts of radiation like 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.000 that would kill a human, and they're just fine. They 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.640 just shrug it off. So there are some species that 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:21.400 are cancer resistant, but pretty much everything else, to a 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.920 greater or lesser extent is and humans aren't even the 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.439 most susceptible species. There are some that are much more 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.920 susceptible to cancer than humans are. So this idea that 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.720 it's it's just a modern disease, it's just a human disease. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.439 It just doesn't stack up. You know. Yes, there are 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.160 things that we do in our modern lives that increase 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.440 the risk of cancer, and our lovely living to a 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.920 nice old age is a major risk factor. You know. 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:49.920 Thank god we don't all die in childbirth and of 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.880 infectious diseases before our tenth birthday. But you know, we 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:57.120 are we are not, you know, unique and wonderful when 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.360 it comes to cancer again, it's it is just part 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.679 of life. There are some other interesting observations you mentioned 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:08.360 in your book about what might create a specific propensity 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.320 for cancer in certain species versus others. One that I 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.520 recall is that you mentioned that it's cancer seems to 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.160 be more prevalent in species that have been through a 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.640 genetic bottleneck at some point in the relatively recent past. 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.280 So like, if their breeding population was reduced to a 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.480 pretty small number at some point, they tend to be 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.760 more susceptible to cancer. Is that correct? Yes, so that 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.240 does seem to be the case, which suggests that there 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.199 are genetic factors at work, because if you shrink a 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.440 population down to a very small what's called an effective 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:41.760 breeding size, you've got quite a small population that's all 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.080 breeding with each other. You do start to get a 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.640 pile up of mutations being passed from generation to generation, 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.800 which might be increasing the risk of cancer. One of 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.600 my favorite species in this case is the Syrian hamster, 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.480 which all the Syrian hamsters pretty much that in pets 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:01.839 and and abs all over the world, are descended from 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:04.800 one litter of hamsters, and they are incredibly cancer prone 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:09.240 because they're just massively in bread um. But yeah, every 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.520 every species, some more than others and some much less 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:18.080 than others. So elephants very surprisingly, you'd think when you 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.720 think about it logically, animals that are very very big, 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.200 they have lots of cells, they live for a very 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.520 very long time, you would think that elephants should be 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.079 riddled with cancer by the time they die, but they 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.720 are not. They are amazingly resistant and really long lived 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.160 animals like bowhead whales, even some of the really long 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.760 lived bats, brand bats that live for forty years, very 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:47.520 resistant to cancer. So they have evolved mechanisms that enable 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:51.520 them to live these very long, luxury lifestyles and be 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.960 resistant to cancer. Whereas you have very small rodents, things 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.400 that live fast and die young, why bother you know 0:13:58.400 --> 0:13:59.800 you're going to be around for a couple of breeding 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:03.560 sea reasons and then near out and humans are kind 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.480 of in the middle. You know, we live for many decades, 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.000 we reach our childbearing years in between our sort of 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.160 twenties to forties, hang around for a bit after, and 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.360 then the risk of cancer does start to go up. 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.280 So you know, this is when you put humans in 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.479 the context of all of life, you start to understand 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:27.640 how our evolution as a species is intrinsically tied to 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.000 our as a species risk of cancer. But you do 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.040 have to separate that from personal risk of cancer as well, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:35.600 and that's a that's kind of a bit hard to 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:40.400 get your head around, so talking about evolutionary risks versus 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.800 personal risks. So one of the most interesting ideas in 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.400 your book that that you keep returning to is a 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.360 framework for thinking about multicellular life through the analogy of 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:57.800 a society, that a multicellular organism is a society of cells. 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.280 Could you explain this way of thinking in and some 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.640 of the implications that extend from it. Yeah, this really 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:09.440 really blew my mind when I started to understand this. So, 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.680 this idea of cells as a society, it goes about 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.120 quite a few decades. A lot of things I discovered 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.119 while I was researching the book are quite old ideas 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:21.640 that have got you know, subsumed or left behind in 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.760 this this rush to just understand cancer as a purely 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:30.400 genetic disease. But the idea is that cells and organisms 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.600 and individuals in a species, they live in societies, and 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.080 there are rules of societies at every single level. You know, 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:40.600 things like do the job you're meant to do, don't 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.480 take more than you need, clean up after yourself, all 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.840 these kind of things. There are rules to societies that 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:51.160 make societies work productively. And you start to look around 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.600 at groups of cells that are in tissues and in 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.720 organs in your body. You look at societies like ants 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:03.640 and bees. You look at colonies, you look at troops 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.000 of chimps and herds of deer, and you look at 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.280 human societies and they all work in the same way. 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.360 And this particularly an idea that I was influenced by. 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.040 There's a researcher in Arizona called Athena Actipis, and she 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:22.680 works a lot on social cooperation and cheating, and the 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:28.440 idea that cancer cells basically cheat in society. They are cheaters, 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.240 They take more than they need, they produce waste, They 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.640 proliferate out of control, they don't die when they're meant to. 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.640 They are not good cells. Now, if every cell in 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.000 your society was doing that, it would just be you know, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.160 mad Max style dystopia. Nothing would work, Your body would 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:50.000 not function. But you can get away with being a 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.800 cancer cell and cheating and keeping going and keeping going 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.400 because to a certain extent, cheaters do prosper. And it's 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:01.920 the same in many animal societies. So one of the 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:06.480 lovely examples that I found was these cape honey bees. 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.000 So this just wonderful examples. So cape honey bees, they 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.760 have a classic honeybee population structure. You have the queen, 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.240 and you have all the workers, the female workers, but 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.200 the queen is the only one who gets to reproduce, 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:20.359 and so all the workers are busy doing all the 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.919 work in the hive, and the queen's just cleaning around 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:27.800 basically like ah ha um, and you know, popping off 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.159 to reproduce when she feels like it. But there is 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:35.240 a genetic change, single genetic change that means that these 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:39.600 worker bees can become queens and they start to just 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.639 sit around, you know, cleaning it up, and eventually the 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:48.119 hive starts to collapse under the weight of all these cheaters, 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.440 and it's just a single genetic change that enables them 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.520 to do this. And actually some of these queens will 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:56.800 go off to other hives and start to infect them 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.840 and turn them into cheaters as well, and it's almost 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:04.000 like a bee cancer, I suppose, because ultimately it leads 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.919 to the destruction of the hive. And you say, well, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.840 why would the bees have this, Why would it be 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:14.040 so fragile that one genetic change can disrupt it like this? 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:16.720 And it turns out that where the bees live it's very, 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:19.600 very windy, So there's a risk that if you just 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.200 have one queen and that's all you get, your queen 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.680 could get blown off course and you might lose he 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:29.119 totally and then your hive would collapse anyway. So the 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:33.560 ability to flip into queen mode it's really useful for 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:37.199 the bees for their evolutionary survival, but it comes with 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:41.520 a risk. And it's the same with cells. So we 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.720 need to be able to make new cells. You need 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:48.200 to regenerate millions of cells in your body every day, 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.760 millions of cells in your skin, your blood, your bowel. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.520 You need to be able to heal yourself. If you're wounded, 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.200 you need to be able to grow from one cell 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:01.920 into an adult human. Cells need to reproduce, they need 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.640 to do stuff. Flip side of that is that they 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.080 can sometimes go out of control because it's the same 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:11.360 mechanisms that make cells grow and multiply in the right 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:15.320 way that they kind of harness and hijack when they 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.159 decide to cheat and grow out of control in the 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.320 wrong way. So that's interesting. You're sort of showing how 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:25.000 cancer is one side of an evolutionary balance where on 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.080 one hand, you've got you know, as your ability to 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.520 do something good goes up, the risks associated with those 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.280 same genes that code for that also go up. So 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:36.719 we know on one side what the downside is. We 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.360 can see tumors and cancer. And you're saying that the 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:45.480 the the goods that make those risks worthwhile are basically 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.399 being able to proliferate quickly in in cell growth. And 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:50.440 this would have to do not just with growth in youth, 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.399 but in healing and things like that. Yeah, exactly, And 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.639 you see this. This starts to explain the differences across 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:00.520 species because if you if you cut a mouse, mice 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:05.600 heal amazingly fast. Their cells just basically knit themselves back together. 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.919 It's it's absolutely incredible. Um. One of the stories that 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.119 I discovered when I was talking to a researcher in 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.320 Santa Barbara who's trying to work with the animals in 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.720 the zoo to understand their cancer risks. She's she went 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:19.120 to the zoo and said, can I get a little 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.639 bit of skin from your giant tortoise? And they were like, 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.440 hell no, we cut a tortoise. It takes a year 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:29.680 to heal, and tortoises live for a very long time. 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.639 They're incredibly cancer resistant, but they the flip side of 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.200 that is that they don't heal very easily. So humans 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.640 again somewhere in the middle. We don't heal as fast 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:43.600 as mice. We live much longer than mice. So there's 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.159 there's all of this stuff is a trade off about 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.640 the evolutionary journey that your species has taken. And one 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:51.320 of the things that I sort of took this to 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:56.040 its logical conclusion, and I was like, if there's aliens, 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:01.240 aliens would get cancer. There's very unlikely that they would 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.800 not if they obey the general rules of evolution, And 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:09.600 this idea that, like cells, organisms living in a society 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.000 behave according to the rules of that we know make 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.000 a good society. I don't think there's any reason why 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.600 aliens wouldn't get cancer. She's like, that's a bit of 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:21.680 a that was a bit of a sort of late 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:27.480 night thought. I think, because all that's necessary is that 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:31.320 they exist by cell division, right, I mean that's pretty 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:33.639 much it. Yeah, yeah, exactly if you have cells and 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.399 your cells are doing cell division, and also if you 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:40.400 have evolution by natural selection, which is basically the engine 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:44.719 that drives cells to to proliferate and be selected for 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:47.760 and to keep going, and species to keep proliferating and 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:52.439 keeping going, then yeah, you probably could get cancer. And 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:56.080 that's what we generally see across the entire animal kingdom. Well, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:58.800 thinking about aliens getting cancer makes me think of another 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.439 interesting part of your book, would was about difficulties in 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:06.440 classifying what appears to be some form of uncontrolled cell 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.879 growth in animals, or even not animals, other organisms that 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.200 are very different from us. So can you look at 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:15.760 what's going on in a clam and say that it 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.520 has cancer? Yeah? Probably, But what about a mushroom or 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:24.480 in an algae or something yeah, this was This was interesting. So, 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.399 you know, what is cancer and when is cancer is 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:32.400 an interesting question. And when you get to more organized animals, 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:36.879 and particularly mammals, we define invasive cancers as cancers that 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:39.600 kind of break through the sort of molecular I guess 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:42.199 you'd call it like saran wrap that's around your organs 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.160 and your tissues. They break through this membrane, and that's 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:49.120 what we call invasive cancer. But really, you know, the 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:52.400 phenomenon of cells growing out of control is all over 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:54.120 the place. You can see it in plants when they 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.040 get gals. You can see it in in fungi. You 0:22:57.080 --> 0:22:58.919 can see it in all sorts of things. And what 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:03.719 are the interesting quest ens is you know something like endometriosis, 0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:06.640