1
00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:13,320
Speaker 1: Particle physicists love playing with big, expensive toys. The large

2
00:00:13,320 --> 00:00:17,080
Speaker 1: Hadron collider in Switzerland costs more than ten billion dollars,

3
00:00:17,120 --> 00:00:20,480
Speaker 1: and hey, what is it good for? Well, you know,

4
00:00:20,800 --> 00:00:24,160
Speaker 1: understanding the nature of the universe and revealing the fundamental

5
00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:27,760
Speaker 1: properties of matter, energy, space, and time. It's a pretty

6
00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:30,800
Speaker 1: good deal if you ask me. But it's not just that.

7
00:00:31,040 --> 00:00:34,639
Speaker 1: Basic research has also created lots of technology that improves

8
00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:38,560
Speaker 1: our lives, including all of the electronics you're currently using

9
00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:41,839
Speaker 1: to listen to me on this podcast. But particle physics

10
00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:45,640
Speaker 1: has more directly saved lives as well. Usually we think

11
00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:49,640
Speaker 1: of particles as dangerous of radiation as a cause of cancer,

12
00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:53,199
Speaker 1: but what if particle physicists could do something useful for

13
00:00:53,240 --> 00:00:56,720
Speaker 1: Once Today on the pod, we'll be asking what if

14
00:00:56,840 --> 00:01:01,080
Speaker 1: particle beams could be used to treat cancer. Welcome to

15
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:04,800
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Practical Universe.

16
00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:18,280
Speaker 2: Hello.

17
00:01:18,400 --> 00:01:21,560
Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Winersmith. I study parasites and space and I'm

18
00:01:21,560 --> 00:01:25,199
Speaker 3: excited to be talking about newer ish treatments for cancer today.

19
00:01:25,440 --> 00:01:25,640
Speaker 4: Hi.

20
00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:28,960
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I didn't get

21
00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:31,840
Speaker 1: into it to save anybody's life, but I'm happy if

22
00:01:31,840 --> 00:01:32,199
Speaker 1: it does.

23
00:01:32,520 --> 00:01:38,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, today we're talking about a practical application of your work. Amazing, amazing,

24
00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:42,200
Speaker 3: And so I know that for some kinds of mathematicians,

25
00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:46,120
Speaker 3: if it turns out that their basic research has applications,

26
00:01:46,120 --> 00:01:49,040
Speaker 3: they're like almost bummed out because it makes it less pure.

27
00:01:51,240 --> 00:01:54,960
Speaker 3: How does the particle physics community feel about this amazing

28
00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:56,160
Speaker 3: application of their work?

29
00:01:56,440 --> 00:01:59,240
Speaker 1: The broader community, I think is positive because they're always

30
00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:03,080
Speaker 1: looking for way to sell fundamental science to politicians and

31
00:02:03,080 --> 00:02:05,600
Speaker 1: to the general public that don't understand that, like any

32
00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:09,120
Speaker 1: investment in basic science is a good idea because it's

33
00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:10,799
Speaker 1: going to yield something in the long term, and they're

34
00:02:10,800 --> 00:02:13,280
Speaker 1: looking for something in the short term to use as

35
00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:16,959
Speaker 1: an example. For me personally, it's a bit more mixed.

36
00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:20,520
Speaker 1: I got into particle physics because it has almost no

37
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:23,720
Speaker 1: immediate applications because, as you know, my parents worked in

38
00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:26,120
Speaker 1: the weapons program, and I was like, it's a little

39
00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:29,840
Speaker 1: morally complicated to be building weapons of mass destruction pointed

40
00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,280
Speaker 1: at civilian populations, which is basically what they were doing,

41
00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:36,800
Speaker 1: and so I was glad that there were no immediate applications.

42
00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:39,680
Speaker 1: So the idea that you're now building particle beams and

43
00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:42,960
Speaker 1: pointing them at people. I'm glad that that's a positive thing.

44
00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 1: So I can imagine how there might be other uses

45
00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:50,639
Speaker 1: for high intensity particle beams pointed at people's headsikes. So yeah,

46
00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:52,639
Speaker 1: I think I would just prefer if the applications were

47
00:02:52,639 --> 00:02:54,720
Speaker 1: more downstream so I didn't have to think about it.

48
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:57,160
Speaker 3: Oh you feel like at some point they're downstream enough

49
00:02:57,160 --> 00:02:59,880
Speaker 3: that you don't have to worry. What if somebody tomorrow

50
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:03,120
Speaker 3: I did say, Okay, this particle beam stuff results in

51
00:03:03,639 --> 00:03:07,519
Speaker 3: weapons of mass destruction, but it's twenty steps away. Does

52
00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:08,400
Speaker 3: that absolve you?

53
00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:11,880
Speaker 1: As long as it's like, you know, twenty generations and

54
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:15,240
Speaker 1: I'm dead when they build the torment nexus from all

55
00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:17,480
Speaker 1: of my particle physics work, then I think it's not

56
00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:19,519
Speaker 1: really my fault. What can I do about it?

57
00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:19,680
Speaker 4: All?

58
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:21,400
Speaker 3: Right? Fair enough? Yeah, I guess you can't see the

59
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:24,680
Speaker 3: implications generations down the line in some cases.

60
00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:26,480
Speaker 1: But I do, in general think it's a really interesting

61
00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:29,800
Speaker 1: philosophical and moral quanity, because the only way to prevent

62
00:03:29,880 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 1: people from using ideas to build things to torture people

63
00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:36,360
Speaker 1: is to have no ideas and to make no advances.

64
00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:38,960
Speaker 1: And I think that's ridiculous, and so I think we

65
00:03:39,120 --> 00:03:41,760
Speaker 1: have to take leaps forward into the future and understand

66
00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:44,320
Speaker 1: the universe, knowing that it's going to change society. We

67
00:03:44,480 --> 00:03:45,320
Speaker 1: just hope for the better.

68
00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:48,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree, and so trying to think about

69
00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:51,400
Speaker 3: how we unroll these new technologies without having too many

70
00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:54,760
Speaker 3: negative implications, I soonish got me thinking about this topic

71
00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:56,360
Speaker 3: a lot, and I feel like we need to be

72
00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:00,360
Speaker 3: having a lot more conversations about how these technologies could

73
00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:02,400
Speaker 3: be used. But on the plus side, we don't have

74
00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:04,840
Speaker 3: to dig into too much of that today because this

75
00:04:05,120 --> 00:04:07,080
Speaker 3: is an unmitigated good.

76
00:04:07,560 --> 00:04:12,080
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, all of those taxpayer dollars spent on building

77
00:04:12,120 --> 00:04:16,160
Speaker 1: particle colliders have resulted in saving people's lives by curing

78
00:04:16,240 --> 00:04:19,159
Speaker 1: their cancers, and so today on the podcast we'd be

79
00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 1: talking about exactly that topic. How exactly can you use

80
00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:27,440
Speaker 1: Daniel's ridiculously abstract research with his ten thousand friends to

81
00:04:27,640 --> 00:04:28,480
Speaker 1: cure cancer.

82
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:31,320
Speaker 3: I love that you have so many friends, Daniel. That's fantastic.

83
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:33,159
Speaker 3: You're very likable, though I'm not surprised.

84
00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:35,760
Speaker 1: Well, I'm rounding them all up to friends. I'm sure

85
00:04:35,760 --> 00:04:36,960
Speaker 1: there's some haters in that community.

86
00:04:37,040 --> 00:04:38,720
Speaker 3: Oh, I say, yeah, I've got that too.

87
00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:41,479
Speaker 1: So I went out there and asked our audience if

88
00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:44,000
Speaker 1: they had an idea for how particle beams could be

89
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:47,479
Speaker 1: used to treat cancer, and we're very delighted to have

90
00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:50,920
Speaker 1: their extemporing the speculation here on the podcast for you

91
00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:54,360
Speaker 1: to enjoy. If you would like to contribute for future episodes,

92
00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:56,680
Speaker 1: please don't be shy, write to us two questions at

93
00:04:56,800 --> 00:05:00,840
Speaker 1: danieland Kelly dot org. Here's what people had to say.

94
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:05,080
Speaker 1: Particle beams are shot into the cancer at high speeds

95
00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:08,760
Speaker 1: and just shake it up from the inside out until

96
00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:13,760
Speaker 1: there's nothing left. Directed with magnets would focus on the cancer,

97
00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:17,040
Speaker 1: target the specific cancer cells.

98
00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:22,520
Speaker 2: Radiation treatments which basically kill the cancerous cells.

99
00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:27,599
Speaker 1: Through very finely targeted obliteration. Using a high energy particle beam,

100
00:05:27,839 --> 00:05:30,440
Speaker 1: you can destroy the cells in a very targeted way.

101
00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:32,960
Speaker 1: It just deteriorates the cell growth.

102
00:05:33,279 --> 00:05:38,320
Speaker 3: Particle beams disrupting the DAYNI of the particular cancer cells.

103
00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:44,840
Speaker 1: Zapping a location a cancer with political beam.

104
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:48,720
Speaker 2: The beams heat the cancer and stops it from metastasizing.

105
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 4: So picking up on context clues here, it's got beam

106
00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:54,000
Speaker 4: in the name, and I'm pretty sure the main way

107
00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:57,279
Speaker 4: cancer is treated is by destroying cancer cells. So my

108
00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:01,080
Speaker 4: answer is via destruction of some kind from all different directions,

109
00:06:01,200 --> 00:06:05,400
Speaker 4: so that those beams all intersect in the exact shape

110
00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:07,880
Speaker 4: of the tumor, fry the area.

111
00:06:08,120 --> 00:06:13,560
Speaker 1: The particles in the beam are specifically targeted at the

112
00:06:13,839 --> 00:06:15,920
Speaker 1: areas in which the cancer is.

113
00:06:16,279 --> 00:06:19,719
Speaker 2: My energy protos immitted from a cyco latron go through

114
00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:25,240
Speaker 2: a lens that is shaped like the patient's tumor, so

115
00:06:25,279 --> 00:06:26,960
Speaker 2: that it goes no deeper than the.

116
00:06:27,080 --> 00:06:32,679
Speaker 1: Tumor, focused on the cancer cells directly, so that they'll

117
00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:34,800
Speaker 1: form a constructive interference.

118
00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:39,159
Speaker 3: Concentrated focused therapeutic particle beams directed at solid tumors reduce

119
00:06:39,240 --> 00:06:42,760
Speaker 3: their viability. The particles damage the Maligan cells DNA.

120
00:06:43,120 --> 00:06:45,680
Speaker 2: The high energy in the gamma range damages their DNA,

121
00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:48,040
Speaker 2: so they can't replicate themselves anymore.

122
00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:50,920
Speaker 1: I would think, by killing everything in their way, and

123
00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:52,760
Speaker 1: thereby also killing the cancer.

124
00:06:53,400 --> 00:06:56,760
Speaker 3: These are super fantastic answers. It sounds like a lot

125
00:06:56,800 --> 00:07:00,400
Speaker 3: of people have heard of this before and so sort

126
00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:04,440
Speaker 3: of on the periphery of their knowledge. At least, I

127
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:07,479
Speaker 3: hadn't heard about this until there was a case of

128
00:07:07,520 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 3: cancer in my family where we were thinking about this

129
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:12,360
Speaker 3: as a treatment. Everything turned out okay. My sense is

130
00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:15,360
Speaker 3: that this isn't in the public consciousness aside from people

131
00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:18,600
Speaker 3: who have to think about this sort of treatment. But

132
00:07:18,640 --> 00:07:20,880
Speaker 3: maybe I'm wrong, because it does seem like almost everybody

133
00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:23,440
Speaker 3: had an answer that was like kind of on target.

134
00:07:23,680 --> 00:07:26,920
Speaker 1: I think I knew roughly how this works, you know.

135
00:07:26,960 --> 00:07:29,080
Speaker 1: I knew that when you get cancer, your options are

136
00:07:29,080 --> 00:07:35,240
Speaker 1: like chemotherapy drinking poison basically, or radiation shooting particles at it,

137
00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:38,440
Speaker 1: or surgery trying to cut it out. In all cases,

138
00:07:38,440 --> 00:07:41,720
Speaker 1: they're like versions of localized suicide, like let's try to

139
00:07:41,800 --> 00:07:43,760
Speaker 1: kill this part of my body before it kills the

140
00:07:43,800 --> 00:07:46,360
Speaker 1: rest of me. Yeah, But until a couple of friends

141
00:07:46,360 --> 00:07:48,760
Speaker 1: had weird growths in their brains recently and it really

142
00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:53,120
Speaker 1: had to make this decision, radiation or surgery never really

143
00:07:53,240 --> 00:07:56,280
Speaker 1: dug into the details the physics of like how does

144
00:07:56,320 --> 00:07:59,000
Speaker 1: a particle beam hurt a tumor how do you aim it,

145
00:07:59,040 --> 00:08:00,960
Speaker 1: how do you make sure you get to the right spot,

146
00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:04,000
Speaker 1: what kind of particle should you use? So I thought

147
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:05,920
Speaker 1: it'd be really valuable for people to have some sort

148
00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:08,120
Speaker 1: of understanding of this, so that in the moment when

149
00:08:08,160 --> 00:08:11,360
Speaker 1: they're faced with these decisions, maybe they have some understanding

150
00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:14,480
Speaker 1: of these options and what's really going on and the risks,

151
00:08:14,960 --> 00:08:16,760
Speaker 1: and so when the doctor says this is going to

152
00:08:16,800 --> 00:08:18,560
Speaker 1: swell your brain or this is going to do that,

153
00:08:18,680 --> 00:08:20,280
Speaker 1: or this is going to damage the other tissue, it

154
00:08:20,320 --> 00:08:23,080
Speaker 1: makes sense to you and helps you make those decisions.

155
00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:27,040
Speaker 3: So radiation is different than the particle beams.

156
00:08:27,080 --> 00:08:27,480
Speaker 1: It's the same.

157
00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:28,440
Speaker 3: Yes, it is the same.

158
00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:30,960
Speaker 1: By radiation, I just mean shooting particles and we'll get

159
00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:34,200
Speaker 1: into that in a minute. But yeah, radiation particle beams.

160
00:08:34,320 --> 00:08:35,320
Speaker 1: To me, it's the same deal.

161
00:08:35,520 --> 00:08:38,080
Speaker 3: Excellent, all right, So let's start with, you know, probably

162
00:08:38,160 --> 00:08:40,200
Speaker 3: the most interesting part the biology.

163
00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:44,000
Speaker 1: That's why this is another fun topic because I was like, ooh,

164
00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:46,240
Speaker 1: physics curing biological issues.

165
00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:49,200
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, although I think at the top of my

166
00:08:49,280 --> 00:08:53,280
Speaker 3: list of fun is not cancer, but what cures for

167
00:08:53,360 --> 00:08:56,600
Speaker 3: cancer is pretty awesome. So go ahead, let's hear the

168
00:08:56,640 --> 00:08:59,200
Speaker 3: physicist explanation for what is cancer?

169
00:09:00,040 --> 00:09:04,320
Speaker 1: Wait, I'm explaining it. I was hoping that. Well, I'm

170
00:09:04,320 --> 00:09:06,040
Speaker 1: going to give it a start and you chime in

171
00:09:06,160 --> 00:09:08,000
Speaker 1: with your informed details.

172
00:09:08,120 --> 00:09:08,440
Speaker 3: Okay.

173
00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:11,520
Speaker 1: My understanding is it's a whole collection of things, like

174
00:09:11,800 --> 00:09:14,080
Speaker 1: they have something in common, but you can't really say

175
00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:17,840
Speaker 1: cancer is like one thing in general. It's cells growing

176
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:21,920
Speaker 1: out of control, but the causes for that can be manyfold, right.

177
00:09:21,880 --> 00:09:24,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a friend who studies cancer, and he

178
00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:27,360
Speaker 3: was telling me that even just one kind of cancer

179
00:09:27,800 --> 00:09:30,280
Speaker 3: can be caused by so many different mutations that that

180
00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:33,319
Speaker 3: makes it pretty difficult to treat because often you want

181
00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:35,280
Speaker 3: to know exactly what kind of mutation it is that

182
00:09:35,360 --> 00:09:38,360
Speaker 3: causes it. And so now we genotype people's cancers to

183
00:09:38,400 --> 00:09:41,080
Speaker 3: try to figure out exactly which of the many mutations

184
00:09:41,120 --> 00:09:43,680
Speaker 3: is causing it to target our treatment. So, yes, it's

185
00:09:43,720 --> 00:09:46,440
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that can cause cancer, but don't

186
00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:48,080
Speaker 3: let that keep you from sleeping at night.

187
00:09:50,200 --> 00:09:52,360
Speaker 1: But in general, it's when something goes wrong with the

188
00:09:52,400 --> 00:09:56,200
Speaker 1: cell's growth function. Right, So cells are constantly replicating, called

189
00:09:56,200 --> 00:09:59,560
Speaker 1: this mitosis, and the nucleus like splits the DNA and

190
00:09:59,640 --> 00:10:02,120
Speaker 1: copy itself, and there's a whole bunch of genes that

191
00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:05,640
Speaker 1: control that copying, but errors can creep in, of course,

192
00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:09,760
Speaker 1: and then cells keep doing this duplicating themselves, copying themselves

193
00:10:09,840 --> 00:10:12,720
Speaker 1: for a while, and then they stop. And this apoptosis

194
00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:15,800
Speaker 1: is when it sells like I'm done, disassembles itself and

195
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:19,160
Speaker 1: gets like reabsorbed into the body. And this huge variation.

196
00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:22,320
Speaker 1: Like some cells only live for like very short periods,

197
00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:25,040
Speaker 1: like a day. Bone cells can live for like thirty years.

198
00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,280
Speaker 1: Neurons can live forever. So you have this whole mechanism

199
00:10:28,520 --> 00:10:31,120
Speaker 1: where cells are splitting and making copies of themselves and

200
00:10:31,200 --> 00:10:34,199
Speaker 1: eventually retiring. In order to get cancer, a bunch of

201
00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:36,560
Speaker 1: things have to go wrong in just the right way.

202
00:10:36,600 --> 00:10:39,040
Speaker 1: So it's kind of amazing that cancer happens as often

203
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:43,040
Speaker 1: as it does because it requires like multiple mutations, multiple

204
00:10:43,040 --> 00:10:45,000
Speaker 1: wye for this whole process to go wrong.

205
00:10:45,360 --> 00:10:47,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a pod

206
00:10:47,360 --> 00:10:49,839
Speaker 3: in biology, congratulations.

207
00:10:52,600 --> 00:10:54,680
Speaker 1: So the first thing that has to go wrong is

208
00:10:54,760 --> 00:10:58,800
Speaker 1: that the gene that controls how often you're going to replicate, right,

209
00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:02,800
Speaker 1: these oncogene the genes that control replication have to go crazy.

210
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:05,120
Speaker 1: So maybe there's like a mutation, or maybe you just

211
00:11:05,160 --> 00:11:08,520
Speaker 1: got a bad gene from your parent or something, and

212
00:11:08,559 --> 00:11:11,440
Speaker 1: this gene that controls how often your splinting can go crazy,

213
00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:14,760
Speaker 1: so you just get like uncontrolled replication instead of like

214
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:16,400
Speaker 1: doing it at a reasonable rate.

215
00:11:16,600 --> 00:11:18,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be because you got a gene from

216
00:11:18,160 --> 00:11:20,160
Speaker 3: your parents. It could be because you were exposed to

217
00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:23,600
Speaker 3: something that caused a bad change in your genetic code,

218
00:11:23,840 --> 00:11:26,360
Speaker 3: you know. For example, that's what happens with skin cancer

219
00:11:26,440 --> 00:11:28,720
Speaker 3: is you acquire a lot of mutations from the sun,

220
00:11:29,200 --> 00:11:32,560
Speaker 3: which I know well and where your sunscreen. Kids.

221
00:11:32,559 --> 00:11:37,080
Speaker 1: Fascinatingly, that's an example of radiation causing cancer right there.

222
00:11:37,160 --> 00:11:41,160
Speaker 1: What's happening are like ultraviolet photons are penetrating into your

223
00:11:41,160 --> 00:11:45,000
Speaker 1: body and causing damage to your DNA, which triggers cancer.

224
00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:47,680
Speaker 1: So for a lot of people they connect radiation with

225
00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:50,320
Speaker 1: the cause of cancer instead of the cure of cancer.

226
00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:53,240
Speaker 1: And actually radiation can end up on both sides of

227
00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:53,840
Speaker 1: that equation.

228
00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:56,760
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but I think instead of fascinatingly, I would

229
00:11:56,760 --> 00:12:01,320
Speaker 3: have said something like suckily or tragically. Yeah. I have

230
00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:03,960
Speaker 3: a big scar on my forehead, which my daughter will

231
00:12:03,960 --> 00:12:06,480
Speaker 3: sometimes be like, oh it's hard to look at, mom,

232
00:12:06,480 --> 00:12:09,160
Speaker 3: and I'm like, kiss my butt, kid, But you don't

233
00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:10,720
Speaker 3: have to live with it anyway.

234
00:12:11,240 --> 00:12:13,160
Speaker 1: Is that a scar from a cancer removal?

235
00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:13,520
Speaker 2: Yeah?

236
00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:15,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, glad they caught it.

237
00:12:15,400 --> 00:12:16,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.

238
00:12:16,640 --> 00:12:20,040
Speaker 1: So we were talking about how cancer cells grow uncontrollably,

239
00:12:20,480 --> 00:12:22,760
Speaker 1: but that's not enough to be a cancer cell, right

240
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:25,839
Speaker 1: Just because you change the gene it controls replication doesn't

241
00:12:25,920 --> 00:12:29,000
Speaker 1: make you already cancer. It's because the cell can just die, right,

242
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:31,040
Speaker 1: So in order to have cancer, you need to have

243
00:12:31,120 --> 00:12:35,400
Speaker 1: uncontrolled replication, and you need to break this apoptosis. This

244
00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:37,720
Speaker 1: thing that tells the cell to turn itself off because

245
00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:40,760
Speaker 1: you're done, buddy, needs to also break and so you

246
00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:43,440
Speaker 1: have to have uncontrolled replication and the cell has to

247
00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:46,160
Speaker 1: be immortal. This is what I meant earlier when I said, like,

248
00:12:46,360 --> 00:12:50,240
Speaker 1: you require multiple mistakes in the cell, from like happy

249
00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:53,720
Speaker 1: cell that's growing nicely and playing kindly with everybody, to

250
00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:57,000
Speaker 1: cancer cell that's going to grow uncontrollably, making more of

251
00:12:57,040 --> 00:12:59,160
Speaker 1: itself and refusing to die off.

252
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, feeding itself, managing to get more blood vessels to

253
00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:05,120
Speaker 3: be made to feed those cells and stuff, and then

254
00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:08,280
Speaker 3: it starts choking off other things. And yeah, thinking about

255
00:13:08,280 --> 00:13:10,400
Speaker 3: all the different ways our bodies can break down, it's

256
00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:15,120
Speaker 3: amazing they ever do anything right. But Kelly's catastrophizing today.

257
00:13:16,559 --> 00:13:19,240
Speaker 1: That is a terrifying rabbit hole to dig into. And

258
00:13:19,280 --> 00:13:22,000
Speaker 1: I've done that sometimes, especially you know, when under the

259
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:25,000
Speaker 1: influence of various substances, and I'm like, wow, I am

260
00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:29,720
Speaker 1: this pulsing, throbbing meat machine, And it's incredible that it

261
00:13:29,840 --> 00:13:32,959
Speaker 1: just keeps working and for most people, just works for

262
00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:37,240
Speaker 1: decades without lots of issues. It's amazing that it survives

263
00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:39,360
Speaker 1: this long. On the other hand, of course, if it didn't,

264
00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:42,839
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be here, and so obviously evolution has done

265
00:13:42,880 --> 00:13:43,400
Speaker 1: its job.

266
00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:46,040
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, we all made the wake up list today,

267
00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:47,720
Speaker 3: so hurrah for all of us.

268
00:13:47,720 --> 00:13:50,760
Speaker 1: Correct, what's the wake up list the people who didn't

269
00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:59,120
Speaker 1: die in their sleep? That's dark? Well, oh my gosh.

270
00:13:56,760 --> 00:13:59,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is what it means. So anyway, Well.

271
00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:01,240
Speaker 1: Do you wake up every morning and you're like, ah,

272
00:14:01,320 --> 00:14:02,640
Speaker 1: I was on today's wake up list?

273
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,520
Speaker 3: No, but I do wake up in the mornings and think,

274
00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:07,280
Speaker 3: you know, you don't know how many days you've got,

275
00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:09,600
Speaker 3: so you should try to make sure you're doing doing

276
00:14:09,640 --> 00:14:11,280
Speaker 3: good by you and your family and your kids.

277
00:14:11,320 --> 00:14:16,600
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, all right, So cancer is uncontrolled, constant growth.

278
00:14:16,679 --> 00:14:19,960
Speaker 1: It builds these blood vessels, It SAPs the resources, and

279
00:14:20,040 --> 00:14:22,160
Speaker 1: you might think, why do I care if I have

280
00:14:22,240 --> 00:14:25,400
Speaker 1: a little blob of cells that are growing out of control. Well,

281
00:14:25,440 --> 00:14:26,800
Speaker 1: you know, they're growing out of control, so they get

282
00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:28,840
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, right, And if it's like that's in

283
00:14:28,880 --> 00:14:31,520
Speaker 1: your brain, it's going to press on important stuff like

284
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,120
Speaker 1: the things that control your balance or your memory or

285
00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:37,720
Speaker 1: your speech patterns, and that's going to be an issue.

286
00:14:38,320 --> 00:14:40,040
Speaker 1: Or if it's in your pancreas or if it's in

287
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:42,440
Speaker 1: your liver, right, it can impede the function of the

288
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:46,520
Speaker 1: normal cells. And also it can spread, right, that's the

289
00:14:46,560 --> 00:14:48,440
Speaker 1: real danger. If you have cancer and it's just in

290
00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:49,920
Speaker 1: one spot and you're like, Okay, I got to get

291
00:14:49,920 --> 00:14:52,280
Speaker 1: this blob out, then they can just do surgery and

292
00:14:52,320 --> 00:14:54,000
Speaker 1: cut it out, or they can do radiation like we're

293
00:14:54,040 --> 00:14:56,440
Speaker 1: going to talk about. But the time that cancer really

294
00:14:56,480 --> 00:14:58,720
Speaker 1: becomes deadly is when it spreads to the rest of

295
00:14:58,760 --> 00:15:02,160
Speaker 1: your body. And this is what means pastasis. Is usually

296
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:05,040
Speaker 1: it spreads into the bloodstream and then the blood carries

297
00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:07,120
Speaker 1: it all around the body and it lodges somewhere and

298
00:15:07,160 --> 00:15:10,000
Speaker 1: then it keeps doing its cancer thing. And now instead

299
00:15:10,040 --> 00:15:12,520
Speaker 1: of having one blob that's growing out of control that

300
00:15:12,560 --> 00:15:15,000
Speaker 1: you can maybe deal with, you have lots of them,

301
00:15:15,240 --> 00:15:18,880
Speaker 1: uncountable number, and they're also spreading, and so very quickly

302
00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:21,760
Speaker 1: it goes out of control. So often it's crucial to

303
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:23,960
Speaker 1: catch cancer early before it metastasizes.

304
00:15:24,440 --> 00:15:27,160
Speaker 3: Future casting here, I'm not going to be sleeping well

305
00:15:27,160 --> 00:15:29,720
Speaker 3: tonight we're.

306
00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:31,720
Speaker 1: Just doing a lot of ironic foreshadowing because we're going

307
00:15:31,800 --> 00:15:33,360
Speaker 1: to get to the bit where we're carrying it. We

308
00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:36,600
Speaker 1: just need to set it up, all right, So all right, great,

309
00:15:36,640 --> 00:15:38,800
Speaker 1: But this is not a small issue, right. Cancer is

310
00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:41,760
Speaker 1: a real killer. Yeah, three percent of people in the

311
00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:45,920
Speaker 1: United States are cancer survivors. It's a huge number. Cancer

312
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,400
Speaker 1: hits about one hundred million people a year, and there's

313
00:15:49,440 --> 00:15:53,000
Speaker 1: like ten million deaths a year. So like, this is

314
00:15:53,040 --> 00:15:55,200
Speaker 1: a real issue. You know, a huge fraction of our

315
00:15:55,240 --> 00:15:58,080
Speaker 1: healthcare budget is focused on cancer, as it should be.

316
00:15:58,560 --> 00:16:02,120
Speaker 1: This is what motivated like Joe Biden's cancer moonshot, Like, hey,

317
00:16:02,240 --> 00:16:05,360
Speaker 1: can we crack this thing? But as you were saying earlier,

318
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:08,600
Speaker 1: one of the big struggles with dealing with cancer is

319
00:16:08,640 --> 00:16:12,040
Speaker 1: that it's not just cancer. It's cancers. Is like more

320
00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:15,240
Speaker 1: than one hundred different types of cancer, and they come

321
00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:17,720
Speaker 1: in all kinds of varieties. Like a huge fraction of

322
00:16:17,760 --> 00:16:20,360
Speaker 1: them are just caused by tobacco use, Like twenty percent

323
00:16:20,400 --> 00:16:23,600
Speaker 1: of all cancer is like from smoking or some kind

324
00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:27,160
Speaker 1: of like snorting, their sniffing, their sucking on those leaves.

325
00:16:27,880 --> 00:16:30,280
Speaker 1: But there's another chunk like twenty percent that are due

326
00:16:30,280 --> 00:16:33,960
Speaker 1: to infection like some virus comes in and injects its

327
00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:37,200
Speaker 1: DNA into your cells, and now those cells are cancerous

328
00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:39,920
Speaker 1: because they've changed your cells in exactly the right way

329
00:16:39,960 --> 00:16:41,040
Speaker 1: to trigger that cancer.

330
00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:42,120
Speaker 3: Jerks, jerks.

331
00:16:42,160 --> 00:16:43,920
Speaker 1: But the good news is, like we know how to

332
00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:47,400
Speaker 1: deal with viruses, so now we have like vaccines against cancer.

333
00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:50,920
Speaker 3: That's amazing, right, yes, incredibly cool.

334
00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:54,160
Speaker 1: Like cervical cancer caused by the human papilloma virus, Like

335
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:57,360
Speaker 1: we have really treated that and really the rates of

336
00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:01,400
Speaker 1: that cancer have dropped tremendously, so they're real here. Even

337
00:17:01,400 --> 00:17:04,040
Speaker 1: though it's lots of different kinds of cancers which require

338
00:17:04,080 --> 00:17:07,240
Speaker 1: lots of different kinds of approaches, people are working hard

339
00:17:07,280 --> 00:17:09,840
Speaker 1: on this and really making progress. So you know, go

340
00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:12,880
Speaker 1: big pharma, go mds, Like, thank you to all those

341
00:17:12,880 --> 00:17:15,359
Speaker 1: folks working on the front line and saving those lives.

342
00:17:15,520 --> 00:17:17,719
Speaker 3: Amen. And also, you know, to focus a little bit

343
00:17:17,720 --> 00:17:20,200
Speaker 3: more on silver lining. You know, the reason so many

344
00:17:20,200 --> 00:17:23,600
Speaker 3: of us are getting cancer and having cardiovascular problems these

345
00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:25,600
Speaker 3: days is because a lot of us are living to

346
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:27,840
Speaker 3: be old enough for this kind of stuff to become

347
00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:30,440
Speaker 3: a problem. You know, before there's a pretty good chance

348
00:17:30,440 --> 00:17:32,560
Speaker 3: you wouldn't survive to be five, But now a lot

349
00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:34,400
Speaker 3: of us, you know, live a lot longer.

350
00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:36,960
Speaker 1: And cancer doesn't just strike humans. You know. One of

351
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:39,679
Speaker 1: the main reasons that rats die, for example, is that

352
00:17:39,720 --> 00:17:42,320
Speaker 1: they live long enough if they're well fed, yeah, to

353
00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:44,880
Speaker 1: get cancer. We had pet rats and after a couple

354
00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:47,480
Speaker 1: of years, they each got these big tumors that were

355
00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:51,240
Speaker 1: like dragging these things around, like these big blobs hanging

356
00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:54,560
Speaker 1: off their bellies. And Katrina has a good friend who

357
00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:57,920
Speaker 1: does cancer studies on rats, and she knows how to

358
00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,480
Speaker 1: operate to remove tumors, and so she offered to operate

359
00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:04,240
Speaker 1: on our rats. And I was like, yeah, I don't

360
00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:05,960
Speaker 1: know if we need to bring our rats into your

361
00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:09,280
Speaker 1: like special expensive facilities. Like at some point, you know,

362
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:12,400
Speaker 1: you're just fighting a losing battle. You cut these tumors out,

363
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:15,000
Speaker 1: you know there are more coming. But it was sad.

364
00:18:15,080 --> 00:18:18,040
Speaker 1: You know. Rats are wonderful little critters. Yeah, and they

365
00:18:18,080 --> 00:18:20,600
Speaker 1: don't live very long, and we bonded with them. But

366
00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:22,720
Speaker 1: on the flip side, that's when we decided we needed

367
00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:25,080
Speaker 1: a longer living critter. And now we have a dog.

368
00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:26,280
Speaker 3: Oh that's fantastic.

369
00:18:26,840 --> 00:18:30,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're right, the bigger picture is as we

370
00:18:30,280 --> 00:18:32,600
Speaker 1: live longer, as we tackle these things, we just discover

371
00:18:32,760 --> 00:18:34,720
Speaker 1: new things that were going to kill us. Right, the

372
00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:36,880
Speaker 1: front just moves and we have a new battle to fight.

373
00:18:37,119 --> 00:18:39,240
Speaker 3: That's right, and it's time to take a break. And

374
00:18:39,280 --> 00:18:41,520
Speaker 3: when we get back, we're going to talk about why

375
00:18:41,640 --> 00:19:04,960
Speaker 3: sharks don't get cancer, and we're back. That was a

376
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:07,840
Speaker 3: trick setup, because even though you hear over and over

377
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:11,560
Speaker 3: again the sharks don't get cancer, sharks do get cancer.

378
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:16,360
Speaker 1: Gotcha, what, Kelly, are you dispelling another pop sign? Myth? Yeah?

379
00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:16,800
Speaker 3: Sorry?

380
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:19,320
Speaker 1: So why was it so commonly said that sharks don't

381
00:19:19,320 --> 00:19:21,919
Speaker 1: get cancer? Was that just purely invented or is it,

382
00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:25,080
Speaker 1: like a crab study, a misunderstanding of real science.

383
00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:25,840
Speaker 2: I don't know.

384
00:19:25,840 --> 00:19:27,359
Speaker 3: It could be both. I mean, I imagine that a

385
00:19:27,359 --> 00:19:29,760
Speaker 3: lot of times when animals in the wild get cancer,

386
00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:33,360
Speaker 3: it debilitates them to the point where something else gets them,

387
00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:36,199
Speaker 3: you know, a predator eats them, for example. And so

388
00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 3: it just could be that we didn't encounter many sharks

389
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:41,959
Speaker 3: that had tumors, or people who did noted it but

390
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,000
Speaker 3: didn't you know, publish on it or something. And so

391
00:19:44,320 --> 00:19:48,320
Speaker 3: I don't know, somehow this misconception entered its way into

392
00:19:48,320 --> 00:19:51,359
Speaker 3: the twitter sphere or the exosphere whatever. We call it now,

393
00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:54,119
Speaker 3: but anyway, yes, sharks get cancer.

394
00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:59,480
Speaker 1: The exosphere is actually a science word already. It's like

395
00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:02,240
Speaker 1: when you don't have an atmosphere, you have particles that

396
00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:04,639
Speaker 1: are just flying around, not interacting with each other. Like

397
00:20:04,680 --> 00:20:07,280
Speaker 1: the moon has no atmosphere, but it does have an exosphere,

398
00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:09,840
Speaker 1: even though there's nobody on the moon posting on X.

399
00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:13,359
Speaker 3: But that's spelled exo, right, yeah, so this would be

400
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,240
Speaker 3: like the xh O sphere or something.

401
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:19,840
Speaker 1: You can't have two words that sound exactly the same.

402
00:20:20,080 --> 00:20:20,720
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

403
00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:22,960
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the English language is the worst

404
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 3: in terms of us spelling of stuff.

405
00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:27,280
Speaker 1: So the particle beams can't cure the problem of the

406
00:20:27,280 --> 00:20:29,919
Speaker 1: English language, but maybe they can help with cancer. So

407
00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:32,520
Speaker 1: let's lower our sights and think about that instead.

408
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:34,480
Speaker 3: So let's overview some of the ways that we can

409
00:20:34,560 --> 00:20:35,320
Speaker 3: deal with cancer.

410
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:38,720
Speaker 1: So, if you have cancer, your options are often surgery.

411
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:41,439
Speaker 1: Like if it's localized, it hasn't spread, and it's not

412
00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:44,879
Speaker 1: next to something else really really delicate, then off you

413
00:20:44,880 --> 00:20:47,240
Speaker 1: can cut it out, Like if you have skin cancer,

414
00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:49,240
Speaker 1: they can just clip that thing off because you don't

415
00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:51,399
Speaker 1: need to go inside the body, it's not next to

416
00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:55,480
Speaker 1: anything else dangerous. And it's probably hopefully hasn't spread yet,

417
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:58,000
Speaker 1: and so they can just cut it off. Whereas if

418
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:01,080
Speaker 1: you have, for example, something growing inside your brain, surgery

419
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:02,919
Speaker 1: is more complicated because they've got to go into your

420
00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:06,480
Speaker 1: brain and maybe it's touching something else really delicate, and

421
00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:09,520
Speaker 1: it's hard for the surgeon to cut out the whole

422
00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:13,440
Speaker 1: thing without touching that delicate nerve and maybe impacting your

423
00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:16,199
Speaker 1: brain function. Right, that was the great fear for my

424
00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:19,679
Speaker 1: two friends who recently had brain surgery because of growth.

425
00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:21,840
Speaker 3: You had two friends who had brain surgery. Are they

426
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:22,639
Speaker 3: both doing okay?

427
00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:24,520
Speaker 1: Both of them are fine, Both of them are scientists,

428
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 1: and both of them were back to work amazingly just

429
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:30,440
Speaker 1: like a month after brain surgery. So it's incredible what

430
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:33,520
Speaker 1: modern medicine can do. Ten hour surgery got to cut

431
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:36,080
Speaker 1: out these lumps, and yeah, they're back to work and

432
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:39,320
Speaker 1: making the same terrible dad jokes ever email that they

433
00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 1: were before surgery. So I can't even blame it on

434
00:21:41,640 --> 00:21:42,200
Speaker 1: the cancer.

435
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:46,720
Speaker 3: My daughter is really into puppeteering, and her hero Adam

436
00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:50,080
Speaker 3: Krutinger passed away from a brain tumor recently, and so

437
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:52,359
Speaker 3: these are difficult things to tackle.

438
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:54,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's scary, but you know, there's a lot of

439
00:21:54,840 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 1: people working hard and dedicating their lives to making this better.

440
00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:00,000
Speaker 1: So surgery is a great option if it's still localize

441
00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:03,520
Speaker 1: and it's not close to anything else that you're risking.

442
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:06,720
Speaker 1: Another option, of course, is chemotherapy, and we kind of

443
00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 1: a whole episode on that if you like. But essentially

444
00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 1: you're just drinking poison, yeah, and you're hoping the poison

445
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:14,879
Speaker 1: kills the cancer, or the poison is designed by clever

446
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:18,280
Speaker 1: chemists to kill the cancer faster than it kills you,

447
00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:20,840
Speaker 1: and so it's a race of attrition there.

448
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:23,760
Speaker 3: Yeah. As I understand it, cancer cells tend to replicate

449
00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:27,440
Speaker 3: faster than other things, and so it's targeting very quickly

450
00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:31,080
Speaker 3: replicating cells. And that's partly why you lose your hair,

451
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,200
Speaker 3: because you've got like very fast replication happening in those

452
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 3: follicles and they kind of get shut down for a

453
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 3: little while, so your hair falls out. And actually, we

454
00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:41,400
Speaker 3: should get someone who knows what they're talking about, because

455
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 3: I'm just vaguely remembering these facts and they could be wrong,

456
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 3: but you're.

457
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:49,080
Speaker 1: Right in each case. What we're trying to do is

458
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:53,360
Speaker 1: highlight a particularly sensitivity to cancer and then take advantage

459
00:22:53,359 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 1: of that in our attack, and the same thing is

460
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:58,879
Speaker 1: going to be true for radiotherapy, which is particle therapy,

461
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:02,040
Speaker 1: and we're shooting beams at the cancer. The idea is

462
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 1: that these cancer cells have a mutation in the place

463
00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: where they're doing their DNA replication right when they're replicating,

464
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 1: instead of doing a normal rate, they're doing an uncontrolled rate.

465
00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:18,120
Speaker 1: And so these cells are actually pretty bad at repairing damage. Right,

466
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: They're already damaged, and they're worse than normal cells at

467
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,399
Speaker 1: repairing damage. And so if you attack them and try

468
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,439
Speaker 1: to break up their DNA, they are more sensitive to

469
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,000
Speaker 1: those kind of attacks than normal cells.

470
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,160
Speaker 3: Ah okay, but so you told us that they're also

471
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 3: resistant to apoptosis, so resistant to breaking apart. Is the

472
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 3: idea just that if you mess up the DNA enough,

473
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 3: they just kind of like die and wither away.

474
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, hmm exactly. I asked Katrina about this actually,

475
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,000
Speaker 1: and she said, another way to look at a crazy

476
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: cancer cell is that it's less resilient. It has all

477
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:54,160
Speaker 1: these broken repair mechanisms that makes it easier to take down.

478
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 1: And so if you can shatter its DNA or attack

479
00:23:57,760 --> 00:24:00,680
Speaker 1: its DNA, it's less likely to be able to to survive,

480
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: so they're more fragile in that sense, they're more susceptible

481
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 1: to radiation than the normal cell.

482
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 3: Okay, but chemotherapy often acts throughout your body, and it

483
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 3: would be really nice to be able to target so

484
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 3: you don't get negative impacts spread throughout the body. And

485
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 3: so particle therapy, I'm guessing, can give us that.

486
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:21,920
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Particle therapy is not just like broadly shooting

487
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: radiation at your whole body. We're shooting particles in a

488
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: very narrow beam, so we can aim where it goes.

489
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: If you have a tumor in your brain, we're not

490
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: shooting particle beams into your toes, and we can get

491
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 1: very very precise with it. And you can think about

492
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:38,199
Speaker 1: it in three dimensions as well, because imagine you have

493
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: a tumor in your brain somewhere right the goal is

494
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: to have the particles hit the tumor and nothing else

495
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 1: that would be ideal. Right now, we can't do that perfectly.

496
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: We have to shoot it through some normal tissue to

497
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 1: get it to the tumor. So we have a few

498
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 1: ways to avoid damaging the normal cells along the way,

499
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about one of them being

500
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: particle choice, but the other one very simple, which is

501
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:03,679
Speaker 1: that you just shoot from a few different angles and

502
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: those beams intersect at the tumor, so the beams aren't

503
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:09,679
Speaker 1: going to hit some normal cells, but the normal cells

504
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: all just get like one beam, but the tumor gets

505
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,879
Speaker 1: like four beams. Or the generalization of this is that

506
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 1: you have a single beam that sweeps around you, and

507
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: as it rotates, it's consistently on the tumor, but the

508
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: normal cells are only getting it part of the time.

509
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 1: So the tumor gets it constantly and it spreads out

510
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: the beam across a bunch of other normal cells, so

511
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:31,880
Speaker 1: they thee is to deposit more energy to do more

512
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:34,959
Speaker 1: damage on the tumor cells than on the normal cells.

513
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:36,959
Speaker 1: And so the way you do that is by shooting

514
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,120
Speaker 1: from multiple angles or by scanning around, so the beam

515
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: stays constantly on the tumor but is spread around on

516
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:44,880
Speaker 1: the normal cells. Does that make sense?

517
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 3: That does? Yeah. So I've talked to a few friends

518
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,120
Speaker 3: who have had cancer and the treatment that they got

519
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 3: saved their lives but increased their future risk of getting

520
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 3: cancer because it damaged the DNA of some of their

521
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,119
Speaker 3: other cells. Do we know for this treatment when you

522
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,239
Speaker 3: get I don't think I would love the idea of

523
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 3: having particles go through all of my brain, even if

524
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 3: I knew they were still focused on one spot. But

525
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:08,359
Speaker 3: you know, it still sounds better than the alternative of

526
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 3: letting the tumor grow. But do we know with this

527
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:13,959
Speaker 3: method forty years down the road, does it increase your

528
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:15,880
Speaker 3: probability of getting a tumor somewhere else?

529
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: It definitely increases your probability of getting a tumor in

530
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,959
Speaker 1: that otherwise normal tissue, because you're shooting beams through it,

531
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: and you're depositing energy and you're damaging DNA, and so yeah,

532
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up for cancer in those cells. But

533
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: people are trying to make this more and more accurate

534
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,880
Speaker 1: by controlling the dose, by doing really thin scans, by

535
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 1: making sure that the dose is like the minimal necessary.

536
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: People used to have really high doses to make sure

537
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,159
Speaker 1: they got the tumor, and now they can scale that

538
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: down and have better models for calculating the dose. They

539
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:48,680
Speaker 1: just used to assume, like the human body is water.

540
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:50,719
Speaker 1: Now they're like, okay, well there's other tissues in there,

541
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: and we need to take that into account. Think about

542
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: the scattering, you know, and now they think more about

543
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: the angles, what is it going to go through. As

544
00:26:57,880 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: time goes on, we get better and better at this,

545
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 1: and also crucially, we're choosing the particles we shoot because

546
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 1: that can determine where the energy lands.

547
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's talk about what our options are for particles.

548
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so number one is photons. Right, We all get

549
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,879
Speaker 1: radiation when we go to the doctor for a broken bone.

550
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: They use X rays to take a picture of your insides.

551
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: And X rays pass through the body, but they're absorbed

552
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: differently by bones and by soft tissue, and that's why

553
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: you can see through the body. Right, And this is

554
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: a whole fascinating topic here about transparency, like why can

555
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: visible light not go through the body but X rays can.

556
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:38,199
Speaker 1: The answer is that for photons, how far they go

557
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:40,719
Speaker 1: through and where they deposit their energy or if they

558
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: do deposit their energy, depends on the wavelength of light. Today,

559
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: we're just going to talk about that interchangeably. Right, Radiation

560
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: is made of particles. One example is a photon. We'll

561
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,239
Speaker 1: also talk about electrons and protons, but we'll start with

562
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: photons mostly X rays.

563
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm still not really understanding how X

564
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 3: rays work. Can you give me some more detail.

565
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: Let's think about what happens when a photon hits your body, right,

566
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: And let's say, for example, it's a normal visual light photon,

567
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: like a red photon that's just flying around. Well, what

568
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: happens when it hits your body is it finds a

569
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: bunch of atoms, and those atoms all have energy levels. Right,

570
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: there are electrons whizzing around those atoms, and they can

571
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: absorb some photons. If an electron has an energy level

572
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:25,200
Speaker 1: that matches the energy of the photon that's coming in,

573
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: it can eat it. Like if the electron is an

574
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: energy level five and it needs a certain amount of

575
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 1: energy to go up to six or to seven, and

576
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: a photon comes along with just that much energy, boom,

577
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,120
Speaker 1: it can gobble it up. So this is atomic absorption

578
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: and also atomic emission. Like we talked about recently in

579
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: our episodes about what color is the sun, that same atom,

580
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 1: if the electron is in the higher energy level, it

581
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: can release that energy shooting off that photon. So atoms

582
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: can absorb photons of specific energy levels. Right. This is

583
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 1: why red paint is red, right, because it absorbs everything.

584
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: But the red reflects the red. The red doesn't get

585
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: absorbed by those materials. This is why glass is transparent

586
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: because there are no atoms in the glass that can

587
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: drink light in the visible spectrum, right, so it just

588
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: passes through. So for very low energy light, like the

589
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: kind that's in the visible spectrum, whether or not it

590
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 1: goes through or whether or not it's absorbed in, deposits

591
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: its energy. And that's the crucial thing, right for curing

592
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: cancer or treating cancer, you want to deposit your energy

593
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: depends precisely on what energy you have. But for treating cancer,

594
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 1: we're not normally shooting just like light bulbs at people, right,

595
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: We're shooting higher energy stuff. And so at higher energy

596
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: what happens is the photoelectric effect. Instead of the electron

597
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: just going up an energy level, you kick the electron

598
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: off of the atom, right, You completely ionize it. So

599
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 1: if you have high enough energy like X rays for example,

600
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: they can kick electrons out of the atom. This is

601
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:52,040
Speaker 1: the photoelectric effect that Einstein used to like discover quantum

602
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: mechanics and all that kind of stuff. And then at

603
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: even higher energy levels, what happens to a photon is

604
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: that it pair produces it turns to an electron and

605
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: a positron because of the nuclear electric field, and so

606
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: what happens to a photon depends a lot on its

607
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:11,239
Speaker 1: energy relative to the matter. And so X rays are

608
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: a typical thing that we use in radiotherapy, and they

609
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: do penetrate, right, and so they have high energy, so

610
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: they can get pretty deep into your body. Like if

611
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:21,479
Speaker 1: you just shoot red light at somebody, it's absorbed at

612
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: the skin, but X rays can penetrate, they can go

613
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: further in. The downside of X rays for treatment is

614
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: that they leave a lot of energy in the first

615
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: few layers, like they deposit energy and then they sort

616
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: of peter out, and so a lot of the energy

617
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 1: is deposited near the top. So if you want to

618
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: get like deeper in you have like a tumor like

619
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: three centimeters under the skin, you have to shoot a

620
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: lot of X rays at it, and the normal cells,

621
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: the cells you don't want to treat that are between

622
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: the skin and the tumor are also getting a lot

623
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 1: of X ray energy. So that's why for X rays

624
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: it's crucial to like rotate it around the body.

625
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 3: And so when you go to get an X ray

626
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 3: and you wear a lead. Oh, that lead is not

627
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 3: covering the spot where you're getting the X rays, ring

628
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 3: everything else, got it?

629
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, exactly, it's covering your critical bits. Yeah. Because

630
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: X ray penetration also depends on the atomic nucleus, right.

631
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: If the atom has high Z a lot of protons

632
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: and neutrons in the nucleus, then it's likely to absorb

633
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:16,719
Speaker 1: the X rays rather than let them through, and so

634
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 1: the lead is like a shield for you.

635
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 2: Got it.

636
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 3: I really messed up my ankle when I was pregnant,

637
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 3: and I was so worried to get an X ray. Uh,

638
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want to hurt little Ada. But anyway,

639
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 3: she was fine thanks to the lead blanket. Or maybe

640
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 3: she's weird because something went wrong, but she's weird in

641
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 3: the best way possible.

642
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:37,880
Speaker 1: So anyway, Well, they used to take X rays with

643
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: incredibly bright sources, right, and now they've reduced those X

644
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: rays far as they can and they can still see

645
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 1: inside your body, but with much much lower luminosity. They've

646
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: improved the detectors they put on the other side, so

647
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: X rays are much safer than they used to be.

648
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: If you're going to get an X ray in like

649
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: the fifties or sixties. Can you're really dangerous, but now

650
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 1: it's much much safer. Yeah, the get do not deliver

651
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,720
Speaker 1: a dangerous amount of radiation. And there are other things

652
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:05,880
Speaker 1: we do in our lives, like fly on an airplane,

653
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: that do increase our radiation dose. But people don't really

654
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: think about it that way very much.

655
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 3: No, I don't, but I'm about to go on a

656
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 3: long plane ride. Thanks for ruining it for me.

657
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: One more thing to worry about.

658
00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 3: That's right. Oh man, I just sleeps so good tonight. Okay,

659
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 3: So how do we make these X ray beams? Daniel?

660
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. If you want to make a beam of

661
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: red light, you just like heat of a tungsten filament

662
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 1: and it glows in the white and you can have

663
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 1: like a prism and filter out the red light. But

664
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: if you want X ray beams, we don't have stuff

665
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:36,479
Speaker 1: that glows in the X ray. You need like super

666
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: duper crazy hot gas. Like sources of X rays astrophysically

667
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: come from like gas near black holes and stuff, and

668
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: so we don't have that here. It's not easy to generate.

669
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: So instead, what you just do is you just heat

670
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: up the electrons, right, take a bunch of electrons, speed

671
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: them up using an electric field. Electrons respond to electric fields,

672
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: so they're going really really fast. This is a lot

673
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: like what we do in particle physics, and then bend

674
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: them with a magnet. Do you have an electron super

675
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: high velocity going in some direction it encounter as a

676
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: magnetic field was to do it? Bends? Right, And when

677
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: an electron bends, the only way you can do it

678
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: is by emitting a photon. Right. That's how electrons bend,

679
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 1: and in a sense, it's interacting with the electromagnetic field,

680
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: and so photons are a natural way for that to

681
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: do it. And so when it's going at high speed

682
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: and bends through a magnet, it tends to emit a

683
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: high energy photon and that's our source of X rays,

684
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,120
Speaker 1: which is why you often have like X ray crystallography

685
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: facilities at places with particle beams, like an Argone National Lab,

686
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: they have like a world class X ray crystallography set

687
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 1: up because they're also good at particles cool.

688
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 3: Okay, so this sounds like a really great method for

689
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 3: creating X rays and finding where tumors are, But this

690
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 3: is not something you'd ever use to treat a tumor.

691
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: Right, Well, you can use these to treat tumor. They're

692
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: not great because they, as we said before, they pass

693
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: through the body and they deliver energy in many layers.

694
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: But you can use X rays, you can use high

695
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: energy photons to treat a tumor. So these days we

696
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: have more advanced techniques than are superior.

697
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so we were just talking about electrons. Can

698
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 3: you skip the phase where you use a magnet to

699
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 3: get X rays and just use those electrons directly?

700
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: You can use electrons and shoot them at people, right,

701
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: and they will deliver their energy. But electrons are not

702
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:21,399
Speaker 1: very penetrating. Right, Your skin mostly stops electrons. At very

703
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,840
Speaker 1: low energy, the electron will just like ionize atoms and

704
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:27,919
Speaker 1: be absorbed. At very high energy, the electrons will emit

705
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: a bunch of radiation and slow down. It's called bremstrong lung,

706
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: which is German for like breaking radiation. And so electrons

707
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: are not very penetrating, mostly because they're very very low mass,

708
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,359
Speaker 1: and so like any interaction basically stops them because even

709
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 1: at high energy, they don't have a lot of momentum

710
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: because their mass is so low, and so they're not

711
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: a great choice for penetrating the gold standard. The thing

712
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:52,839
Speaker 1: you really want is some kind of radiation which takes

713
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: a while to stop, which like flies through your body

714
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: and then deposits its energy all in one go somewhere

715
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 1: deep in your body in a way that you can tune.

716
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 3: And so we've talked about photons and electrons, and let's

717
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 3: let the listeners guess what kind of particle it is

718
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:11,120
Speaker 3: that does that, and we'll get back to it after

719
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 3: the break. All right, So we've already talked about photons,

720
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 3: we've already talked about electrons, but the best method is

721
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 3: one we haven't talked about yet. And by process of elimination,

722
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:40,720
Speaker 3: I'm gonna guess.

723
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: It's protons because you only have three particles in your mind,

724
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: that one.

725
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:50,279
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you told new particles are complicated, But yes,

726
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 3: I guess those are the first three that come to mind.

727
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: Well, that's fair because the universe is mostly made of protons, electrons,

728
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: and photons. So that's a good set to have in

729
00:35:58,840 --> 00:35:59,959
Speaker 1: your mind. Good choice, Kelly.

730
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 3: I also have this outline in front of me that

731
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 3: says protons.

732
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:06,919
Speaker 1: Next, So that makes you sound smart.

733
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:08,959
Speaker 3: That's right. That's my trick.

734
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: Protons are a great choice for treating cancer, and protons

735
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,439
Speaker 1: are also one of the favorite toys of particle physicists

736
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: because we can accelerate them to really high energies and

737
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: bend them around. They have a lot of mass compared

738
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 1: to an electron, so you can get them going really fast,

739
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 1: and when they go around curves, they don't emit as

740
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: much radiation because they're heavier, and protons, because of the

741
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: way they interact with matter, can penetrate deeply and deposit

742
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:36,720
Speaker 1: their energy deep under the skin without harming as much

743
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:38,280
Speaker 1: the tissue in between.

744
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,759
Speaker 3: Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, why does it work that way?

745
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating. Protons can interact with the electrons and

746
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: matter right or with the nucleus, and which one they

747
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: do depends on their velocity. So when they're going really fast,

748
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: they basically can't see the nucleus and they just interact

749
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: with the electrons. But it's like glancing collisions. It's too

750
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,359
Speaker 1: big and heavy to really get slowed down by these electrons.

751
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 1: It's like a bulldozer are going through a field of snowmen. Right,

752
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: It's just like plows right through them hardly, gets hardly

753
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: gets slowed down. Just reading Calvin and Hobbes and so

754
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: perfect and so like each snowman that the bulldozer hit

755
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,760
Speaker 1: slows down a tiny little bit, but it really doesn't

756
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:20,959
Speaker 1: deposit a lot of energy. It doesn't get slowed down.

757
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:24,279
Speaker 1: But this interaction is dependent on the velocity squared, and

758
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:26,400
Speaker 1: so at some point it reaches some threshold where it

759
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:29,720
Speaker 1: does get slowed down enough. Now it's going to interact

760
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,120
Speaker 1: with the atomic nucleus and that is going to rapidly

761
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,360
Speaker 1: sap it of energy. And so there's like a threshold

762
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: there above which it can mostly ignore what's going on

763
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: inside the nucleus and just plow on forward. But when

764
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: it gets too slow, then all of a sudden, it's

765
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: a very strong interaction with a nucleus and it deposits

766
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: a lot of its energy right there. And so that's

767
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: why it's excellent of course for treatment. And this is

768
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 1: called the brag peak.

769
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 3: I remember reading about the brag peak because when I

770
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 3: was reading about space radiation. One of the problems with

771
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 3: trying to understand and how radiation impacts people is that

772
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:05,879
Speaker 3: you often study it in rodents yea. And rodents are

773
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 3: just smaller than humans. There's less mass that the proton

774
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 3: needs to go through and if the particles in some

775
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 3: cases are just like shooting through the rats, then you

776
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 3: don't really understand the impact of the radiation because the

777
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 3: particle didn't stop and release all of its energy inside

778
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 3: of the body of the organism. And so there's some

779
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 3: concern that, like studying rodents, doesn't tell you exactly what

780
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 3: you need to know because humans are just bigger, and

781
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 3: we're more likely to stop a particle because it's running

782
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:34,240
Speaker 3: into more stuff. Does that make sense?

783
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Can't you solve that problem

784
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 1: just by like, you know, gluing a bunch of rats

785
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: together into like a huge sphere of rat and then

786
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 1: you could have enough rat to stop the protons.

787
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 3: Daniel, you missed your calling in biology.

788
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure we could get that past the IRB, right,

789
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:50,440
Speaker 1: I don't see any problems with that.

790
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 3: That sounds totally ethical. I'm sure that have high quality

791
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 3: of life.

792
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: I wonder if you need to have the mouths, I'll

793
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: point it out, but then you know what's going on

794
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 1: in the inside. Yeah, anyway, this problem not a great idea.

795
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:01,400
Speaker 3: This gets.

796
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:05,760
Speaker 1: So the brag peak is a great way to understand

797
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: where the energy is deposited. By these various particles. So

798
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: if you imagine like we're talking about as a function

799
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: of the depth, how deep into the tissue. Start out

800
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 1: with electrons mostly deposit energy the very surface. Photons deposit

801
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: a lot of their energy the surface, then it fades gradually,

802
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: but protons like deposit almost no energy, and then all

803
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 1: of a sudden boom, you're like ten centimeters in. They

804
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:29,760
Speaker 1: deposit almost all of their energy there. That's the peak

805
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 1: that they're referring to when they say the brag peak.

806
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: And this is excellent, right, because if you could tune this,

807
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: if you could say, oh, I wanted ten centimeters in

808
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: or fifteen centimeters in, then you could basically just shoot

809
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: a beam and have a deposit most of its energy

810
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: deep within the tissue and spare the normal tissue where

811
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,399
Speaker 1: the protons are passing through. They're still plowing through those

812
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: electronic snowmen, but they're not really doing a lot of damage.

813
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 3: That's amazing, right, So tell me, in a practical sense,

814
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 3: how would you do this?

815
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:58,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, so why changing the energy of the protons. You

816
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: can change the depth, so where it deposit its energy

817
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: depends on the velocity. Right, So if you start out

818
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: with a lot of velocity. Then you're going to go

819
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:08,280
Speaker 1: much deeper and then all of a sudden deposit your energy.

820
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: If you're very close to that threshold already, then you're

821
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: not going to go very far and then cross over

822
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:15,919
Speaker 1: that threshold where you're depositing your energy. So you can

823
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,320
Speaker 1: tune the depth where the protons are depositing their energy,

824
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: which means doing damage to those cells, breaking up the

825
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: cancer DNA by tuning the energy of the protons. So

826
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,760
Speaker 1: you already have like two dimensional pointing just by pointing

827
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: the beam at something. Right, now you have the third

828
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: dimension of control. By tuning the energy of the beam,

829
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 1: you can go deeper, you can go less deep, and

830
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: so you can do this three D they call it

831
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: tensile beam scanning, where you're changing the direction of it

832
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,760
Speaker 1: and you're changing its energy simultaneously, so you can trace

833
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: out the three dimensional shape of the tumor. Right, you're

834
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: probably imagining a tumor as a sphere, and that's what

835
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: a physicists would do, and that's probably what they did

836
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, Like let's assume a spheertical tumor. But

837
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: what that was clueless physicist accent I don't know.

838
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:05,280
Speaker 2: Was it German?

839
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 3: That sounded vaguely?

840
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: It was a rough average of all the accents I've

841
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: heard it.

842
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 3: Cern there you go, okay, perfect all there's.

843
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 1: A little Russian in there, a little German, maybe, some Italian,

844
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: and a smattering of Japanese. No, all right, I'm equally

845
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: offending the whole world right now. But imagine if you

846
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: can do a three D scan with like an MRI

847
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: and you can see exactly where the tumor is, and

848
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: tumors are never simply shaped, they're like long, and then

849
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: they got a blob over here. And what you ideally

850
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:33,800
Speaker 1: want to do is deposit energy everywhere in the tumor

851
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 1: and nowhere else. Well, with a proton beam, you can

852
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: do that because you can aim the beam and then

853
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 1: you can change the energy. You go back and forth

854
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: and back and forth over the tumor. And then when

855
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 1: you change the angle and now you're intersecting a different

856
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: part of the tumor with a different shape and different depth,

857
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,439
Speaker 1: Now you change the energy the protons back and forth,

858
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: back and forth. You can scan in three D. You

859
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: can like trace out the whole tumor, use the brag

860
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: peak to deposit energy there and almost nowhere else.

861
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 3: That's amazing. So do we We have like complicated models

862
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 3: that sort of figured that out ahead of time, and

863
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 3: you just press a button and then it automatically gets

864
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 3: the whole tumor, or is somebody like going, you know,

865
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 3: step by step and like moving the beam around to

866
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 3: get every little part of the tumor.

867
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:17,240
Speaker 1: It's all computerized, absolutely and controlled, so nobody's like, oops,

868
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:20,920
Speaker 1: I slipped and I you know, fried your eyeball or whatever.

869
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 1: The disadvantage is that proton beams are harder, right, Like

870
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,800
Speaker 1: electron beams are easy to make electrons or light that

871
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:30,759
Speaker 1: you can accelerate them easily, X ray beams there's lots

872
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: of ways to make that. Proton beams are complicated, and

873
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:36,680
Speaker 1: the magnets that bend them and point them are huge.

874
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: We're talking like hundreds of tons of magnets usually wow.

875
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: And so these facilities are much more specialized. Say sound fantastic,

876
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: and if you get cancer, I hope you have access

877
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:49,439
Speaker 1: to one, But there are not that many of these

878
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: facilities yet in the world because they are big and complicated.

879
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 3: Is this also a kind of new treatment for cancer?

880
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 3: How long has this been around?

881
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: It's an idea that's been around since the forties. Like

882
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: Robert Wilson, the guy who designed Fermilab and did all

883
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy architecture and it was a huge important

884
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 1: particle physicist predicted this in the nineteen forties in a

885
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 1: paper and it was first used in the fifties. It

886
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:16,919
Speaker 1: was pretty expensive until around twenty five years ago when

887
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: people made some improvements in magnet technologies. Now, instead of

888
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: there being like one center at Fermilab, for example, there

889
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: are a few dozen centers worldwide, and as of like

890
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: ten years ago, like one hundred thousand people had received

891
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: this treatment. So it's still not the overwhelming treatment for cancer,

892
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: mostly because there aren't that many centers and they're expensive,

893
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: but it's definitely the best treatment you can get.

894
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 3: So we're not medical doctors, so I just I want

895
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 3: to clarify a little bit for the best treatment we

896
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 3: can get. That probably depends on what kind of tumor

897
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 3: you have. Yes, yeah, okay, So.

898
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: From a particle physicist point of view, thinking about maximizing

899
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 1: the control of the energy dose, proton beams are from

900
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: physics point of view, the best way to optimize the

901
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: energy dose delivered. But please speak to your doctor about

902
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: your treatment needs. Don't listen to me.

903
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 3: That's right, You're welcome, my heart. We had all the

904
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 3: right caveats there.

905
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 1: But for a particle physics nerd, it's very similar to

906
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 1: what we do with the Large Adron Collider. Like how

907
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: you make a proton beam, Well, that's what we have

908
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,319
Speaker 1: with the Large Adriene Collider is a proton beam, and

909
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: so the steps are very similar. Like you start with hydrogen, right,

910
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: protons are everywhere. Then the most common thing in the universe,

911
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: the universe mostly hydrogen, which is a proton and an electron.

912
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: Take some hydrogen, heat it up, so the electron goes

913
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: away and you have protons, right, and then you just

914
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: need to accelerate them, which means put them in an

915
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: electric field. We used to just use flat electric fields

916
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: to accelerate particles. Now we use these cool things called

917
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 1: RF cavities. These things have oscillating electromagnetic waves, so the

918
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: particles like surf on them, which is really cool, and

919
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:58,400
Speaker 1: get accelerated more easily over shorter distances to higher energies.

920
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: And then you have magnets to keep them going in

921
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: a loop. And that's exactly how the Large Hadron Collider

922
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: works and so these are lower energy than the large

923
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: hadron collider. You don't need crazy energies in order to

924
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 1: deposit a dose in your brain. But it's the same technology.

925
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: And so because it's more similar to the LAC than

926
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: to like your standard technology, it is more specialized and

927
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 1: it is more rare.

928
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:22,160
Speaker 3: All right, So let me tie this back to parasites.

929
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 3: All right, So when you have a parasite in your

930
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 3: body and then it dies, that can often be worse

931
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 3: than having a live parasite in your body, because now

932
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 3: there's all this dead tissue in your immune system like

933
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 3: responds to it. Does this process have to get done

934
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 3: in stages? Because if you've killed too many of your

935
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 3: cells all at once, your brain now has all of

936
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:41,800
Speaker 3: this dead stuff that it needs to sort of process

937
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 3: and deal with. Or do you not know because I

938
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:45,440
Speaker 3: were way outside of physics.

939
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 1: Now I don't know in great detail, and maybe some

940
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 1: cancer doctors can write in and let us all know.

941
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:54,800
Speaker 1: But I do know that the immune system will respond

942
00:45:54,840 --> 00:45:57,760
Speaker 1: to this. And for example, if you get radiation treatment

943
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: on a tumor, it can make the tumor swell even

944
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: if it dies, Like the immune response there can make

945
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: the tumor swell, which can also be dangerous because if

946
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:08,840
Speaker 1: it's next to something delicate, you don't want it to swell.

947
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 1: And so again talk to your doctor about what the

948
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: best treatment is for you and all those side effects.

949
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: But we actually do have some data about what would

950
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 1: happen if you shot a super duper high energy particle

951
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: beam into your head, because it happened once. What Yeah,

952
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,240
Speaker 1: there was a Russian guy for Ghoski and he basically

953
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: was looking down the particle beam. He was doing some

954
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 1: repairs on the beam and they turned it on. Oops,

955
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: and so it went right through his head. And amazingly

956
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: the guy survived.

957
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:38,439
Speaker 2: Wow.

958
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:41,719
Speaker 1: He ended up with epilepsy and some hearing loss, and

959
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 1: some people say his personality changed a little bit, but

960
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: he lived his life otherwise. So I wouldn't recommend it,

961
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: but it is possible to survive LEDC level energy proton

962
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: beam through the brain.

963
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, this happened at the LAC. No.

964
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:58,920
Speaker 1: This was definitely not at CERN or the large Hage

965
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 1: of Competor. This is in nineteen seventy eight at the

966
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 1: Institute for Hinenergy Physics and Provino back behind the Iron Curtain,

967
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: and it was a nattally Burgoski.

968
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 3: Poor guy. Well, I'm glad he made it.

969
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: We're all glad that he survived, and we're starting that happened.

970
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: I hope that it doesn't happen to you. But you know,

971
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,799
Speaker 1: the bigger picture is that particles interacting with matter is complicated.

972
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: Particles from the sun and from the atmosphere can mutate

973
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: your DNA and cause cancer, but particle beams can also

974
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: deposit energy in those cancer cells in a very defined

975
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: and very calibrated way to help treat your cancer. And

976
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: so particles are on both sides of the coin of life.

977
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 3: That's right. And I'm guessing that most of the folks

978
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 3: who are working on these particle related questions did not

979
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 3: have in mind that this would end up being a

980
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 3: treatment for cancer. So you know, we're gonna go ahead

981
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 3: and bang that drum that we've been banging so much lately.

982
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 3: Fund basic research. This stuff results in amazing life saving technologies.

983
00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't know if that's studying to like

984
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,400
Speaker 1: how ducks mate, or how to synthesize this random chemical

985
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: or whether this parasitoid wasp, But does this or that

986
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: is going to yield the next great bit of technology.

987
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:12,399
Speaker 1: That's going to save your life or a loved one,

988
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:16,400
Speaker 1: or transform our lives into some way we can never imagine.

989
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 2: Amen.

990
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, thanks for listening, and we'll see you

991
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:30,960
Speaker 3: on the next show. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is

992
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 3: produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you,

993
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:35,280
Speaker 3: We really would.

994
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: We want to know what questions you have about this

995
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Universe.

996
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 3: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

997
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 3: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get

998
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 3: back to you.

999
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,319
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

1000
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: at Questions at Danielankelly.

1001
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:54,720
Speaker 3: Dot org, or you can find us on social media.

1002
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 3: We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on

1003
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 3: all of those platforms. You can find us at D

1004
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 3: and K Universe.

1005
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:04,359
Speaker 1: Don't be shy write to us.