WEBVTT - Cancer and Evolution with Kat Arney 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.560 Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:18.320 Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.560 And today we're bringing you another interview that I conducted 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.040 last week while Robert was taking a break from work. 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.720 That's right. Once a year, I like to bury myself 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:32.320 in some sacred imported soil and allow my my body 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:34.960 to break down and then reconstitute itself so that I 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.320 can rise once more and be up to the challenges 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:41.800 of podcasting in this day and age. Today we are 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.600 going to be sharing the conversation that I had with 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:49.440 the British geneticist and science communicator cat Arnie talking about 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.440 her upcoming book, Rebel Cell Cancer Evolution in the New 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.600 Science of Life's Oldest Betrayal. So a little bit of 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:02.120 biographical information. Cat Arnie hosts the Genetta Unzipped podcast and 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:06.479 she holds a PhD in developmental genetics from Cambridge University. 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.640 She was a key part of the science communications team 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.959 at Cancer Research UK from two thousand four to co 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.440 founding the charity's award winning science blog and acting as 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:21.520 a principal media spokesperson She's also the author of Hurting 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:26.200 Hemmingway's Cats, Understanding How Our Genes Work and How to 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:31.080 Code a Human and she's written for Wired, The Daily Mail, Nature, Mosaic, 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:35.520 News Scientist and more, and has presented many BBC radio programs. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.679 You can find Cat Arnie on Twitter at at cat 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:43.640 Underscore Arnie A r in E Y and UH. I 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.080 should note that the book is coming out at different 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.800 times in the UK in the US, so Rebel Cell 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.480 can be found in the UK starting on August six, 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.040 and then in the US I believe it's coming out 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.280 on September twenty nine, but you can go ahead and 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.160 preorder it online. All right, Well, I'm I'm in a 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.240 rare position here because I am just like the listeners 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:05.520 out there. I have not heard this interview yet myself, 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.160 so I am excited, uh to to to listen in 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.200 as she sheds light on this, uh, this fascinating topic. 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.480 Cat Arnie, thanks so much for joining us today on 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.040 the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:23.000 It's a pleasure to have someone on the show who 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.239 has not only written a great book, but you're actually 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.320 a podcaster yourself, so you're so you're used to this 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.239 whole game talking into the mic with alone by yourself 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.400 in a room. Yeah, I've been making the Genetic sun 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.920 Zipped podcast. I did have to say that through this 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.960 time we've we've deliberately made it a COVID free zone, 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.679 so it is currently a COVID free genetics podcast. So 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.560 that's been that's been a nice thing to do during 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:47.800 during this time. I gotta say I was listening to 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:50.400 one of your episodes of the Genetics sun Zip podcast, 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:53.480 the one about mount Sly and Pauline Gross, which I 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:56.400 thought was fantastic. Of course it connects to the book 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.239 that we're gonna be talking about today. So, uh, personal 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.480 endorsement from me of your podcast. Don't really like it, 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.240 thank you. Yeah, it's really fun. We we alternate. We 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:07.480 do sort of interviews with scientists who are working now 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.639 in genetics. But I also really like to go back 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.079 through those stories and and dig out, particularly the untold 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:15.919 women who were often they're doing the work, doing lots 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.080 and lots of stuff, incredibly detailed observations and breeding experiments, 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:22.639 and then basically didn't really get the credit for it 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.440 because until the middle of the twentieth century or later, 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:29.040 women weren't really respected as a scientist, so it's it's 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.080 just a wonderful exploration you come up with all these 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.520 incredible people, although, of course, in the early twentieth century 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.440 lots of them do turn out to be eugenicists, but 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.960 that's different. Podcast. Yeah, so I think maybe a good 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.320 place to start when talking about cancer. Of course, your 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.080 book is about cancer, and specifically a lot about the 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.280 genetics of cancer. I wanted to maybe start off by 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.480 talking about this strange kind of gut feeling or almost 0:03:54.600 --> 0:04:02.000 superstition that somehow, unlike other diseases, cancer is a modern synthetic, 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:06.880 some kind of perversion in some way against nature, and 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.520 that it sometimes comes with this odd edge of moralism, 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.800 that cancer is not just unfortunate, but it's somehow decadent 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.559 in an indicator of something wrong with our age. Parts 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.240 of your book indicate to me that you've come up 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.440 against this kind of thinking a lot as well. What 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.520 do you think this sort of thinking signifies. I think 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.400 it's absolutely fascinating. Cancer is not a new disease, and 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.800 that really became abundantly clear to me. So, just as 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.559 a little bit of background, I spent twelve years working 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.440 at Cancer Research UK, the UK's biggest cancer charity, answering 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.680 lots of questions from the public, and all the time 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:46.440 this question comes up. It's like, why me, isn't it 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:48.919 just a modern disease? Oh, it's all this stuff in 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.960 the air, Oh it's stress. What what is it? And 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.560 you start to look into what cancer really is, and 0:04:55.760 --> 0:05:00.279 it's it's ancient. It's hardwired into our biology because it's 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.640 just cells doing what they're going to do. Cells multiplying, 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:08.240 cells jostling for space, cells competing with the cells around them, 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:12.239 obeying the processes of evolution. And so when you really 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.320 start to look, it's not surprising that you find cancer 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.120 going all the way back through human history, all the 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.719 way back through the history of of animal life on 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.159 this planet. But at the same time, when people start 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.840 to become aware of cancer as a disease, they start 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.719 to ask questions about, well, where did this come from? 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:32.040 Why has it affected me? You start to get the 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.240 Greek doctors, people like Hippocrates, who were writing about cancers 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.120 in their patients and saying, well, what what has caused it? 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.880 It must be the gods, it must be the humors. 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.000 Something is out of whack in here, and then you 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.159 start to get the slightly more religious thing of well 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.040 it is it's sins visited on us, it is something 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.120 to do with immorality, modern living. And then you bring 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.680 up to today this we don't necessarily have such a 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.440 strong religious view of it, but certainly the idea of 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.640 almost wellness as a religion. You've done something toxic to 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.040 yourself and that's why you you now have cancer, and 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.160 you look back at the history of cancer as a 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:14.359 biological phenomenon, and that's simply not true. You know. It's 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.920 it's basically like the dark side of life rather than 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:20.840 anything that we have particularly brought on ourselves in our 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.160 modern life. Yeah, that's one of the things I really 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:25.640 loved about your book was the way you how you 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:30.400 show cancer to be so fundamentally integrated with with with 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:35.200 life itself or I guess, multi cellular life. Um. And 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:37.680 so so maybe we should focus on on a couple 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.359 of these ideas in particular, one of them, I guess, 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:43.760 is the idea of modernity, right, the idea that that 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:48.640 cancer is something that was very rare until recently. You 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.200 make an argument against and people have argued this, but 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.400 you make an argument against this in the book, and 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:58.000 you cite some both some reasoning about why a lot 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.719 of cancers wouldn't necessarily show up in the kinds of 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:04.479 remains we can examine, and then pointing out examples that 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:06.680 we do find in fact, in the human record and 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:11.200 physical remains of human society and prehistory. Yeah, it's the 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:14.200 classic thing in biology that you find what you're looking for, 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:17.320 and people have not been looking for signs of cancer 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.720 in ancient remains. And the thing about cancer is that 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.160 that when you're thinking about ancient remains that we find, 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.000 mostly you're talking about bones, and particularly when you get 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:31.200 very ancient, you're talking about fossilized bones. And not every 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.120 cancer leaves its trace in the bones. So when you're 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.800 thinking about cancers that affect the soft tissue, you may 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.360 never see the traces of a cancer that killed someone. Also, 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.400 you know, ancient remains don't turn up in beautifully age 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.720 matched structured populations, so you can say, oh, this is 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.360 exactly the population that was alive at the time, this 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.520 is exactly the number of cancers in this population. I 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.160 think some people have argued that the fact that cancers 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:03.040 are rare in ancient humans is an argument that cancer 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.640 was very very rare. But I slightly feel the other 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:08.800 way around. I feel like the fact that the more 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:13.480 people start looking for cancers in human and animal remains 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.680 from from way way back, the more cancers they start 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:21.120 to find suggest that it was more common. We will 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:23.800 never know how how common it was, because you can't 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.280 do you know, a lovely epidemiological study on the sort 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:28.600 of stuff that you can get out of the ground. 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:31.080 You get what you get and you get on with it, basically. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.439 But I do think that cancer is not an exclusively 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.959 modern disease. I will say, certainly it is more common 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.120 as we live longer. So another of the things I 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:44.520 go into later in the book is the idea that 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.200 there's almost a sort of a shooting up point. After 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:50.200 you have got to a certain age, your risk of 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.920 cancer does significantly go up. So if you think about 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.760 ancient populations when there were many, many, many more things 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.800 that we're going to kill you, your chances of getting 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:02.559 to an age where you could dive cancer before something 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:06.960 else got you worse smaller. So it's not surprising we 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.480 find fewer ancient remains with cancer. But when you think 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.760 about some children have been found with types of cancer 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.640 that are very very rare in populations, and the fact 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.040 that we have found them at all suggests that this 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.559 is a disease that has always been with us, and 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:29.199 it's not exclusively a confection of modernity. It's it's basically, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.760 you know, it is with us and always has been. 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.880 And what about the part of the misconception that views 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.800 cancer is something that is uniquely kind of human and 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:42.160 maybe associated with uh, with the synthetic products of human 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.000 industry and all that. Like, this ties into the idea 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.360 that sharks don't get cancer, right, that there's a widespread 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:52.160 belief that that, for some reason, animals that don't engage, 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:54.280 you know, don't live in cities and drive cars and 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:58.319 eat processed food and stuff won't get cancer. But they do. Yeah, 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:02.040 And this really my mind. I can see over on 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.040 my bookshelf. I'm so tempted to go and grab it. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.480 But there's a book where someone has gone through all 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.120 the different species that have been known to have cancer 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.520 in In some cases it's many examples, in some it's 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.400 just a few. But it's pages and pages and pages. 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:20.600 It's everything from like odd wolves to zebras, and almost 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.960 every branch of the animal kingdom develops cancer. There are 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.920 a couple of really weird exceptions. So one is comb jellies. 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.959 Comb jellyfish don't seem to get cancer, never been detected. 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:37.720 And also sponges really weirdly resistant to sponges. There's this 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:41.680 guy in in Arizona, guy called Carlo Malei, who is 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.760 zapping sponges with enormous amounts of radiation like that would 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.560 kill a human, and they're just fine. They just shrug 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:52.000 it off. So there are some species that are cancer resistant, 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.320 but pretty much everything else to a greater or lesser 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.680 extent is and humans aren't even the most susceptible species. 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.040 There are some that are much more susceptible to cancer 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.720 than humans are. So this idea that it's it's just 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.720 a modern disease, it's just a human disease, it just 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.920 doesn't stack up. You know. Yes, there are things that 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:14.559 we do in our modern lives that increase the risk 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:18.160 of cancer, and our lovely living to a nice old 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.439 age is a major risk factor. You know, Thank god 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:23.959 we don't all die in childbirth and of infectious diseases 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.680 before our tenth birthday. But you know, we are we 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:30.520 are not, you know, unique and wonderful when it comes 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.920 to cancer again, it's it is just part of life. 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.000 There are some other interesting observations you mentioned in your 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:42.080 book about what might create a specific propensity for cancer 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.760 in certain species versus others. Are One that I recall 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.760 is that you mentioned that it's cancer seems to be 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.720 more prevalent in species that have been through a genetic 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.080 bottleneck at some point in the relatively recent past. So like, 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.959 if their breeding population was reduced to a pretty small 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.480 number at some point, they tend to be more susceptible 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.440 to cancer. Is that correct? Yes, So that does seem 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.400 to be the case, which suggests that there are genetic 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.040 factors at work. Because if you shrink a population down 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.160 to a very small what's called an effective breeding size, 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.280 you've got quite a small population that's all breeding with 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.079 each other. You do start to get a pile up 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:22.559 of mutations being passed from generation to generation, which might 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.439 be increasing the risk of cancer. One of my favorite 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.920 species in this case is the Syrian hamster, which all 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.599 the Syrian hamsters pretty much that are in pets and 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.400 labs all over the world are descended from one litter 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.520 of hamsters, and they are incredibly cancer prone because they're 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:43.240 just massively in bread um. But yeah, every every species, 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:47.079 some more than others and some much less than others. 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.600 So elephants very surprisingly, you'd think when you think about 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.800 it logically, animals that are very very big, they have 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.520 lots of cells that they live for a very very 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.120 long time. You think that elephants should be riddled with 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:04.559 cancer by the time they die, but they are not. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.559 They are amazingly resistant and really long lived animals like 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.920 bowhead whales, even some of the really long lived bats, 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:15.920 brand bats that live for forty years, very resistant to cancer. 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:21.200 So they have evolved mechanisms that enable them to live 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.679 these very long, luxury lifestyles and be resistant to cancer. 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.000 Whereas you have very small rodents, things that live fast 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.800 and die young. Why bother. You know, you're going to 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.120 be around for a couple of breeding seasons and then 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:37.199 you're out. And humans are kind of in the middle. 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.720 You know, we live for many decades, we reach our 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:44.160 child bearing years in between our sort of twenties to forties, 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:46.880 hang around for a bit after, and then the risk 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.000 of cancer does start to go up. So you know, 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.160 this is when you put humans in the context of 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:57.240 all of life, you start to understand how our evolution 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.679 as a species is in trance tied to our as 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.400 a species risk of cancer. But you do have to 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.200 separate that from personal risk of cancer as well, and 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:08.839 that's a that's kind of a bit hard to get 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:13.480 your head around. So we're talking about evolutionary risks versus 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.880 personal risks. So one of the most interesting ideas in 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.480 your book that that you keep returning to is a 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.440 framework for thinking about multicellular life through the analogy of 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:30.840 a society, that a multicellular organism is a society of cells. 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.480 Could you explain this way of thinking in some of 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:38.640 the implications that extend from it. Yeah, this really really 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.480 blew my mind when I started to understand this. So, 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.720 this idea of cells as a society, it goes about 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:48.720 quite a few decades. A lot of the things I 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.560 discovered while I was researching the book are quite old 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.280 ideas that have got, you know it, subsumed or left 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.360 behind in this this rush to just understand cancer as 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.240 a purely genetic disease. But the idea is that that 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:06.320 cells and organisms and individuals in a species, they live 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.920 in societies, and there are rules of societies at every 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.680 single level. You know things like do the job you're 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.240 meant to do, don't take more than you need, clean 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.680 up after yourself, all these kinds of things. There are 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:23.160 rules to societies that make societies work productively. And you 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.880 start to look around at groups of cells that are 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.640 in tissues and in organs in your body. You look 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:34.880 at societies like ants and bees. You look at colonies, 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:39.480 you look at troops of chimps and herds of deer, 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.440 and you look at human societies and they all work 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.440 in the same way. And this particularly an idea that 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.240 I was influenced by. There's a researcher in Arizona called 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:53.880 Athena Actipis, and she works a lot on social cooperation 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:59.480 and cheating and the idea that cancer cells basically cheat 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.480 in society. They are cheaters. They take more than they need, 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:07.520 they produce waste, they proliferate out of control, they don't 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.680 die when they're meant to. They are not good cells. Now, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.360 if every cell in your society was doing that, it 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.080 would just be, you know, mad max style dystopia. Nothing 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.640 would work, your body would not function. But you can 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:25.920 get away with being a cancer cell and cheating and 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:30.200 keeping going and keeping going because to a certain extent, 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:34.360 cheaters do prosper, and it's the same in many animal societies. 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.280 So one of the lovely examples that I found was 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:41.960 these cape honey bees. So this just wonderful example. So 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:46.280 cape honeybees, they have a classic honeybee population structure. You 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:48.280 have the queen, and you have all the workers, the 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.360 female workers, but the queen is the only one who 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.960 gets to reproduce, and so all the workers are busy 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.320 doing all the work in the hive, and the queen's 0:16:55.400 --> 0:17:00.240 just cleaning around basically like a um and you know, 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:02.840 popping off to reproduce when she feels like it. But 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:06.800 there is a genetic change, single genetic change that means 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:12.440 that these worker bees can become queens and they start 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.720 to just sit around, you know, queening it up, and 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.800 eventually the hive starts to collapse under the weight of 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.760 all these cheaters. And it's just a single genetic change 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.560 that enables them to do this. And actually some of 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:29.080 these queens will go off to other hives and start 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.639 to infect them and turn them into cheaters as well. 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:36.200 And it's almost like a bee cancer, I suppose, because 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:39.119 ultimately it leads to the destruction of the hive, and 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.120 you say, well, why would the bees have this, Why 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.000 would it be so fragile that one genetic change can 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.480 disrupt it like this? And it turns out that where 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.679 the bees live it's very, very windy. So there's a 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.840 risk that if you just have one queen and that's 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:56.639 all you get, your queen could get blown off course 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.040 and you might lose her totally, and then your hive 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:04.440 would collapse anyway. So the ability to flip into queen 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:09.160 mode it's really useful for the bees for their evolutionary survival, 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.520 but it comes with a risk. And it's the same 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.960 with cells. So we need to be able to make 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:20.040 new cells. You need to regenerate millions of cells in 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.000 your body every day, millions of cells in your skin, 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.000 your blood, your bowel. You need to be able to 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.480 heal yourself if you're wounded. You need to be able 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:33.520 to grow from one cell into an adult human. Cells 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.160 need to reproduce, they need to do stuff. Flip side 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.760 of that is that they can sometimes go out of 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:43.000 control because it's the same mechanisms that make cells grow 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.320 and multiply in the right way that they kind of 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.880 harness and hijack when they decide to cheat and grow 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.880 out of control in the wrong way. So that's interesting. 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:56.080 You're sort of showing how cancer is one side of 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.480 an evolutionary balance where on one hand, you've got you know, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.040 as your ability to do something good goes up, the 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.879 risks associated with those same genes that code for that 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.600 also go up. So we know on one side what 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.200 the downside is. We can see tumors in cancer, and 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.040 you're saying that the the the goods that make those 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:20.480 risks worthwhile are basically being able to proliferate quickly in 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:22.560 cell growth. And this would have to do not just 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.320 with growth in youth, but in healing and things like that. Yeah, exactly, 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.919 And you see this. This starts to explain the differences 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:33.000 across species because if you if you cut a mouse, 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:38.160 mice heal amazingly fast. Their cells just basically knit themselves 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:42.439 back together. It's it's absolutely incredible. Um. One of the 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:44.600 stories that I discovered when I was talking to a 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.879 researcher in Santa Barbara who's trying to work with the 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.440 animals in the zoo to understand their cancer risks. She's 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:51.840 she went to the zoo and said, can I get 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:54.280 a little bit of skin from your giant tortoise, and 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:57.560 they were like, hell, no, cut a tortoise. It takes 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:02.240 a year to heal, and tortoises live for a very 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.000 long time. They are incredibly cancer resistance, but they the 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.600 flip side of that is that they don't heal very easily. 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.280 So humans again somewhere in the middle. We don't heal 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.000 as fast as mice. We live much longer than mice. 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.680 So there's there's all of this stuff is a trade 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.000 off about the evolutionary journey that your species has taken. 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.200 And one of the things that I sort of took 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.920 this to its logical conclusion, and I was like, if 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:33.679 there's aliens, aliens would get cancer, that there's very unlikely 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.880 that they would not if they obey the general rules 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:41.960 of evolution, and this idea that like cells, organisms living 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:45.560 in a society behave according to the rules of that 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.400 we know make a good society. I don't think there's 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:52.320 any reason why aliens wouldn't get cancer. She's like, that's 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.280 a bit of a that was a bit of a 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:59.360 sort of late night thought. I think, because all that's 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:03.360 necessary is that they exist by cell division, right, I mean, 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.240 that's pretty much it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, if you have 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:08.960 cells and your cells are doing cell division, and also 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.760 if you have evolution by natural selection, which is basically 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:17.119 the engine that drives cells to to proliferate and be 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.040 selected for and to keep going, and species to keep 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:24.560 proliferating and keeping going, then yeah, you probably could get cancer. 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:29.200 And that's what we generally see across the entire animal kingdom. Well, 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:31.920 thinking about aliens getting cancer makes me think of another 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.520 interesting part of your book, which was about difficulties in 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:39.520 classifying what appears to be some form of uncontrolled cell 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:43.920 growth in animals or even not animals, other organisms that 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:46.240 are very different from us. So can you look at 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:48.800 what's going on in a clam and say that it 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:52.600 has cancer? Yeah? Probably, But what about a mushroom or 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:56.719 in an algae or something? Yeah, this was this was interesting. 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.760 So you know, what is cancer and n is cancer? 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.240 Is an interesting question. And when you get to more 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:08.960 organized animals and particularly mammals, we define invasive cancers as 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.879 cancers that kind of break through the sort of molecular 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:14.640 I guess you'd call it like saran wrap that's around 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.600 your organs and your tissues. They break through this membrane, 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.480 and that's what we call invasive cancer. But really, you know, 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.240 the phenomenon of cells growing out of control is all 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:27.040 over the place. You can see it in plants when 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.800 they get ghouls, you can see it in in fungi. 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:31.879 You can see it in all sorts of things. And 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.800 what are the interesting questions is you know something like endometriosis, 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:39.680 which is a condition where you get rogue tissue within 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.480 the body and it's sort of it grows and its 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:45.399 spreads and it bleeds and it's very very painful. It's like, 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:50.160 but that's not cancer, it's not invasive. But actually, when 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:52.000 you look at that kind of tissue, it has lots 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:54.240