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David, this is Evolutionary Psychology the podcast.

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Actual Evolutionary Psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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David, today we have uh a guest, Amy Boddy, who is in the anthropology

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department at UC Santa Barbara, and she studies microchimerism.

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Yes.

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And I did not really know what microchimerism chimerism was before

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going into this.

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And I learned uh during the episode all about it and a bunch of other crazy fascinating

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things, like um cancer biology and whether rates of

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cancers you know differ across different animals, whether mammals have more of it than

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other uh types of animals, um, and even contagious face cancer and the Tasmanian devil.

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We talked about that.

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Lots of really interesting stuff.

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Yeah, and tons of stuff on I didn't realize about like the placenta and moms and

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babies, and how um your um you might have the cells of your mom and your

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grandmother in you, like just oh yeah, cool crazy stuff.

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Yeah, and and maternal offspring conflict that manifests itself in weird ways with genes

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expressed from the father's side versus the mother's side.

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Super interesting stuff.

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Yeah, no, this is this is mind uh uh expanding, uh bending stuff

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that um it's so fun to do these things.

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Like I'm I'm I'm learning a lot.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, no, no, no, me too.

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This was um just as much of a treat for for Dave and me as it will be for you.

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Um so I think you will enjoy this one.

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Yeah, without further ado, here's Amy Body and David and I discussing all things um

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cancer and microchimeric.

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I don't know if that's the right way to end that.

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Cancerous and microchimerical.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, we'll we'll we'll Dave and I will work on this, but in the meantime, enjoy that.

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So Yeah, enjoy it.

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So we can just go right into it.

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Um I I labor under the false uh cartoonish

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impression that um I am an organism and I'm pretty much like all

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related to my like I am just like an individual thing.

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I have this idea that sort of you know when when mothers get pregnant the p the relatedness

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between like the placenta and the mom gets kind of confusing.

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And I have like intro bio, like I know that like snails, like the expression of

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like which direction the snail's shell will twist is like a function of the mom and not the

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baby.

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So like you can have the extended phenotype of like phenotypic expression downstream.

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And of course, all of um uh and I'll shut up in a second, but like all the all the sort of

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like methylation or um I can't even think what is the term for when um

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yeah, these things that my methylation or like the epigenetics.

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Epigenetics.

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Yeah, people are like, oh, epigenetics like changes the way we think about natural

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selection.

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I mean, obviously, if you think about extended phenotypes, they extend across generations.

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So anyway, this is all long-winded preface to I still have this, I feel like, and I

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don't know, but I feel like you're going to disabuse me of my cartoonish view that I'm

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pretty much a uniform uh thing related to myself, and I I I'm not

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made up of I don't even know what.

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So so so where do we start with like uh or or if there's two questions.

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One is like, what do you do?

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Because I also feel like like when we talk to like outside people, like we're

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psychologists, people like, oh, are you analyzing me, you know?

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But I think what you do, I don't even understand exactly what you do.

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So I think you have a very particular interesting thing where most people don't even

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understand what you do.

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So either can you talk about what you do or am I completely wrong about how I

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think about the unity of myself?

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Great questions.

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Um I don't know I don't even know if what I know what I do, but I'll try and explain it.

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But that's a great answer.

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Yeah, me neither.

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I've been in every department from like uh the school of medicine to psychology to to

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anthropology.

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So yeah, I am um bouncing around interdisciplinarily.

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Um, but I mostly study um pregnancy and I study

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cells that cross between mother and the baby called microchimerism.

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Um and I also st study cancer biology and so sorry, cross

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between mother and the baby.

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Could you walk me through how that works?

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So I do not actually know anything about microcamerism.

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I'm very excited to learn about it.

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So what does that mean for a cell to pass between uh the mother and the offspring?

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Yes.

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Um so during pregnancy, um the and Dave, you started with the

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placenta and the blurred boundaries.

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So the placenta is actually a fetal organ.

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It's mostly derived by by fetal tissue.

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And it invades the maternal endometrium.

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And it and across species, across mammals, this

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integration of the tissues is super diverse.

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It's so cool.

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It's like the site of evolutionary conflict.

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So the placenta is one of the most diverse mammalian organs.

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And it's, of course these two genetic entities that are uh fighting for survival of both of

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each other, but one wants more than the other.

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And so it's like a super diverse.

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Yeah, we actually haven't talked about parent off-burn conflict.

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So some of our basic evo bio we haven't covered on the podcast.

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Yes, yes.

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So so ideally in in many of these scenarios, you can see it driven Paternal genes

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would like more resources.

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Um, and maternal genes, it's in their best interests to save resources not to

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bleed fully because they want to save resources for offspring in the future,

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right?

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Classic, putting it all on the

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yes, yes, exactly.

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So you see this like tug of or um, and you can see it playing out at the genome level with

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um genomic imprinting.

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So genes that are specifically turned on just in the paternal lineage versus genes

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that are just turned on in the maternal lineage.

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And so right there at the site of you know resource transfer is the placenta, it's

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transferring resources to the offspring.

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It's communicating with the mother.

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It's doing all this.

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And so across mammals it's quite diverse in its its shape, its size, how it diffuses,

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how it integrates into tissue.

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And so humans have one of the most invasive placentas.

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And so our placentas actually the specialized fetal

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cells like invade the the tissue so much that it widens the maternal

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spiral arteries that kind of embed the endometrium and completely remodels it, has

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direct access, taps the resource.

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I think the baby, and when we think about invasive placentas, the paternal genes won, like

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it got the upper hand in that scenario, actually, because um, because then once there's

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direct access to resources and it's hooked on, when suddenly there could be lack of

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resources, what the baby does is ramp up maternal blood pressure.

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And so we see this with pregnancy complications and stuff like that.

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So when we're thinking about, you know, cooperation conflict, yeah, um, humans are unique

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in that, but yeah, our placenta might have um evolved to be quite invasive in that of

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course was adaptive, but um the the the downside to that is

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it's costly on the maternal body.

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Wow.

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Yet another thing women can blame men for.

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Yes, exactly.

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Is is the is the idea that men won in the sense of still that's like still naturally

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selected, like in the sense of if there's differential reproductive success out in the

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world among variants of this like sort of offspring production system, is it

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that the uh the babies that are extracting more are

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doing better.

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And that's sort of the um the the check.

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I mean, because obviously like you can't kill the mom, like right, like yeah.

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Well, it's it's it's so complicated because if you have we know birth weight matters,

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right?

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Birth weight matters.

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A bigger baby um is gonna survive better.

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It has more fat.

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It's got more resources, right?

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We see this all the time that it matters.

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But on the other extreme, a bigger baby means more potentially obstructed labor and birth

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complications.

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So there is this, you know, um really stabilizing selection on

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birth weight.

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And it's on average like seven pounds.

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And I think it's so cool.

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Like there's just not a lot of wiggle room that you have.

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And it might be um yeah, pun intended.

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Um the um yeah, and it might have to, you know, our birth is the timing of

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birth is just interesting too, because as mammals, um, comparatively you are

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termed like at full term at 37 weeks, but you can go up to

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42 weeks.

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And I think that is mind blowing that like we have basically this five,

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six-week window where like baby could come anytime, and we don't know.

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And we actually, from a biological medical standpoint, don't really know what triggers

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labor.

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We know there's like a cascade of things, but we can't predict it.

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Yeah.

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We don't know it when it's coming.

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And it's I think, yeah, all of this negotiation between the mother and the baby actually.

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That's really cool.

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Yeah.

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You would expect there's tremendous selection pressures on the determine pregnancy or a but

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determine birth like activate birth program.

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Yes.

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Uh that's really interesting.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Um if we could if we could get uh into um the logic of of the

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conflict here, because it's not it's not parent offspring conflict.

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So that's when, you know, parents are uh you know equally related to all their children,

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but uh siblings are twice as related to themselves as they are to their siblings and to

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future siblings.

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And so that creates conflict where the siblings or where the children are going to want

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more resources or twice as much for themselves as for their siblings, whereas parents are

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gonna want to distribute resources and investments equally.

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And that's the fundamental conflict that that Robert Trivers talks about.

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Fascinating idea.

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But this is not that.

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This is uh paternal and maternal conflict.

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And I want to see f see if I can um walk through the logic of how this works.

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Because I I'm I'm I confess I don't I don't quite fully understand it.

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So is it is it the idea that um men have or the males

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have a greater um ability to invest in say other

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uh reproductive opportunities, and that's why they want more investment from the mom.

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That that uh if uh uh like so so why why is it in the male's interest to

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for the mom to put more resources into the offspring than than would be otherwise

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beneficial to her or helpful or healthy for her?

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It actually builds on parent offspring conflict.

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And I believe David Haig coined the term it's maternal fetal conflict at this point.

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Ah, okay but it is, you know, again the under the same principles that the fetus shares

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half the maternal genes, but then the other half are paternal genes or from the

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paternal point of view.

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And it's those that are driving the conflict uh you know, as in, you know,

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the um the paternal genes the best interest is to invest in that pregnancy

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and to get that baby the most resources as possible while the mother is

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only half you know related obviously important for survival of the baby um

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although she will have more babies right and so the idea is that you're going to invest

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as much as you should not as much as you can in this baby.

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And but yeah, and just to be clear, like that's that's really helpful.

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What is the logic though behind the the dad?

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Like let's, you know, I'm the dad.

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Right.

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Why why do I want the baby to invest more for this particular pregnancy?

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Why do I want why do my genes want to invest extract more from the mom than the mom wants

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to extract?

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Is it because actuarially I might be mating with somebody else in the future?

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She might be mating with somebody else in the future.

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Like is that the okay yes, that's that's the idea, but I think it goes back farther than

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humans.

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Um in terms of looking at genomic imprinting um that arose with

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the evolution of the placenta.

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Um only placental mammals have imprinting, where the again there's like

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this allelic expression that really depends.

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There's about 120 imprinted genes.

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Um and some are paternally imprinted um and some are maternally imprinted.

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So that means some are just expressed from the paternal genome and it matters.

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They have different uh physiology they have different impacts on

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on the the development of the baby.

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And there's, and we learn this from there's various diseases where if you delete the

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maternal allele versus the paternal allele, those are two different phenotypes that arise

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in the baby.

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So it's it's super interesting when you think about it from that.

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And so, but that arose really, really early in our evolutionary story in terms

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of um maybe a hundred million years ago with the evolution of the placenta.

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Wow.

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And even, I mean, the other thing I'm sure this is, I'm sure you've thought of this.

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I'm just saying it out loud.

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Yes.

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Is that um there's also just the cold calculation of the mother faces

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this.

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Well, if I do invest to a certain level, there's the chance that I might die.

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Yes.

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And the the the dad just doesn't have that calculation, right?

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So there's also just this cold calculation of you just you just snip out even even assuming

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a monogamous species, there's still just the the the trade-off, the cost benefit of

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well, if I invest more in the offspring, there's a chance that the mother might die.

242
00:14:59,890 --> 00:15:05,140
And if you're the mother, you land on a different trade-off point than if you're not the

243
00:15:05,140 --> 00:15:10,260
mother is simply because, you know, like, yeah, the mom might die, but like my offspring

244
00:15:10,260 --> 00:15:11,620
might be better off, and it's not me.

245
00:15:11,700 --> 00:15:15,460
So like it's you know, obviously it's not explicit, but it's just cold calculus.

246
00:15:15,620 --> 00:15:19,860
So I think even I would I would think, at least off the top of my head, it seems like even

247
00:15:19,860 --> 00:15:25,620
that, just because you're not the body risking death or you're not the one investing,

248
00:15:25,700 --> 00:15:28,180
there's still a conflict between those two.

249
00:15:28,340 --> 00:15:29,780
You don't land on the same threshold.

250
00:15:29,860 --> 00:15:30,180
Yeah.

251
00:15:30,500 --> 00:15:31,140
Yes.

252
00:15:31,490 --> 00:15:36,690
But yeah, I think it it's more of a historical legacy evolutionarily because obviously

253
00:15:36,770 --> 00:15:42,770
within humans, we um if there's a tons of data to show if if if mother

254
00:15:42,770 --> 00:15:45,010
dies, baby does not have a good chance of surviving.

255
00:15:45,250 --> 00:15:45,650
Oh, that's true.

256
00:15:46,530 --> 00:15:46,690
Yeah.

257
00:15:47,250 --> 00:15:53,250
Um so I think a historical legacy I see um that

258
00:15:53,250 --> 00:15:56,560
we have, you know It's why we get sick.

259
00:15:56,880 --> 00:16:02,000
Perhaps from an ancestral form in in which maternal uh mortality wouldn't have been such a

260
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,160
death sentence for the kid, perhaps an ancestral form.

261
00:16:04,560 --> 00:16:07,600
Or more polyga more polygamy or something.

262
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:08,480
Oh, interesting.

263
00:16:08,560 --> 00:16:10,560
Yeah, because we're we're hyper adaptationists.

264
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:12,560
We're like, it must be designed perfectly.

265
00:16:13,520 --> 00:16:15,360
That's why is this, yeah.

266
00:16:15,520 --> 00:16:16,080
Oh yeah.

267
00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:16,880
Yes.

268
00:16:17,170 --> 00:16:17,330
Yes.

269
00:16:17,570 --> 00:16:23,570
Where I actually don't see the I I s I I don't I see us as like a messy bag of conflict

270
00:16:23,570 --> 00:16:25,890
that somehow is still able to reproduce.

271
00:16:26,130 --> 00:16:26,370
Yeah.

272
00:16:26,690 --> 00:16:31,330
Like we're just like there's all these internal conflicts and and there's adaptive

273
00:16:31,330 --> 00:16:34,050
compromises and then it just like yeah.

274
00:16:34,210 --> 00:16:34,530
Yes.

275
00:16:34,930 --> 00:16:39,330
Ever ever since my child was born, I just like to just slightly editorialize for a second.

276
00:16:39,410 --> 00:16:43,380
Like people often celebrate like soldiers and things, and I'm like, you know, it's

277
00:16:43,380 --> 00:16:43,860
violence.

278
00:16:44,020 --> 00:16:48,020
Like, if you want heroes, if you want to see a hero go to a maternity ward.

279
00:16:48,260 --> 00:16:48,500
Yes.

280
00:16:48,740 --> 00:16:52,100
Like there are heroes, real heroes in the world every day.

281
00:16:52,260 --> 00:16:53,860
Uh they're in a maternity ward.

282
00:16:53,940 --> 00:16:55,540
It's incre I mean, it's crazy.

283
00:16:55,700 --> 00:16:55,940
Yes.

284
00:16:56,260 --> 00:16:58,100
Yes, yes, absolutely.

285
00:16:58,500 --> 00:16:59,940
Um anyway.

286
00:17:00,580 --> 00:17:05,780
So yeah, uh, that all to say that there's cells that then get transferred

287
00:17:06,070 --> 00:17:09,830
between our like deeply invasive placenta, right?

288
00:17:10,150 --> 00:17:15,910
There's fetal cells that get transferred into the mother's body, and there's maternal cells

289
00:17:15,910 --> 00:17:18,550
that get transferred into the baby's body.

290
00:17:18,790 --> 00:17:24,390
Um, and we used to think this was a spillover effect because we have a deeply invasive

291
00:17:24,390 --> 00:17:25,190
placenta.

292
00:17:25,350 --> 00:17:31,030
Um, but then it was observed in species that don't necessarily have as a deeply

293
00:17:31,030 --> 00:17:36,780
invasive placenta that have that like road, um, that that highway that um

294
00:17:36,780 --> 00:17:38,380
our placentas have.

295
00:17:38,540 --> 00:17:43,820
Um and also these cells persist decades

296
00:17:44,460 --> 00:17:48,140
after the pregnancy, and they're doing things.

297
00:17:48,380 --> 00:17:53,820
So um we think that potentially there is an adaptation there, and they're

298
00:17:53,980 --> 00:17:59,750
they're actually um selected for to help with the pregnancy, but also

299
00:17:59,750 --> 00:18:02,390
help with that organism afterwards.

300
00:18:03,350 --> 00:18:09,190
And that actually sometimes that can still lead

301
00:18:09,190 --> 00:18:10,070
to conflict.

302
00:18:10,230 --> 00:18:12,710
So that can still lead to problems.

303
00:18:13,110 --> 00:18:19,110
So another way to put it, if I understand right, is that the mechanisms in

304
00:18:19,110 --> 00:18:24,920
the mother have a have a biochemical sample of the

305
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:30,760
at least the genetics, if not other substances of her offspring inside

306
00:18:30,760 --> 00:18:31,320
of her.

307
00:18:31,640 --> 00:18:32,120
Yes.

308
00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:32,840
Yeah.

309
00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:33,800
Yes.

310
00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:39,560
Um, and we we think they last last a lifetime and they have like

311
00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:41,720
biological impacts.

312
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:45,880
And if you think about it again, thinking from like this, I think about it from a maternal

313
00:18:46,200 --> 00:18:48,840
fetal conflict perspective.

314
00:18:49,810 --> 00:18:54,770
it's the baby's insurance policy that the mom will take care of it after

315
00:18:55,410 --> 00:18:56,290
birth, right?

316
00:18:56,450 --> 00:19:00,290
It's it's been like a really costly negotiation for nine months.

317
00:19:00,530 --> 00:19:06,130
Um, and now there's cells inside the mother that could maybe potentially

318
00:19:06,130 --> 00:19:08,930
help the mother care for the baby even more.

319
00:19:09,090 --> 00:19:14,370
So maybe they're involved in lactation biology, attachment, like all of these things,

320
00:19:14,530 --> 00:19:20,480
helping the mother heal after the pregnancy as well, um, in order to

321
00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:23,440
make sure they have the best shot at survival.

322
00:19:23,840 --> 00:19:26,320
So is it it that's really interesting?

323
00:19:26,480 --> 00:19:32,160
Is it because the baby is new and has new genetics and has

324
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:33,120
new stuff?

325
00:19:33,360 --> 00:19:38,960
Is it sort of like a it's like a booster rocket of this is a brand new genotype?

326
00:19:39,040 --> 00:19:43,360
This is brand like you know, everybody has this model of like babies are fresh, and it's

327
00:19:43,360 --> 00:19:46,720
obviously like there's there's so much here, like the pathogen coevolution and stuff.

328
00:19:47,120 --> 00:19:51,170
So the idea is that baby cells are special, fresh.

329
00:19:51,410 --> 00:19:52,610
This is the metaphor.

330
00:19:52,770 --> 00:19:55,250
And they're coming in and like hyper helping the mom.

331
00:19:55,330 --> 00:20:01,090
Is that is that I mean, I realize it's like a I'm it's a metaphor, but is that Yes.

332
00:20:01,170 --> 00:20:02,130
I that's the idea.

333
00:20:02,290 --> 00:20:03,330
So we don't know, right?

334
00:20:03,490 --> 00:20:07,490
This is like um it's it's a newish field.

335
00:20:07,570 --> 00:20:10,450
I don't want to say completely not new because we knew about this forever.

336
00:20:10,530 --> 00:20:14,930
It was just really hard to study because they're rare cells that are half identical to the

337
00:20:14,930 --> 00:20:15,330
host.

338
00:20:15,570 --> 00:20:21,160
So we didn't have a lot of genetic tools in our toolkit to actually study this.

339
00:20:21,320 --> 00:20:24,280
Actually, what they used to do is look for the Y chromosome.

340
00:20:24,360 --> 00:20:26,600
So it was women who had given birth to a son.

341
00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:32,040
And they just like draw their blood and look for Y chromosome and say, oh, these cells are

342
00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:32,760
still here.

343
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:37,000
But then they started doing it for a bunch of women that had never given birth to a son and

344
00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:39,320
still found Y chromosome in their blood.

345
00:20:40,280 --> 00:20:43,870
And then it was like, where are those coming from?

346
00:20:44,110 --> 00:20:49,790
And so then they had a bunch of just female lab tax doick that thought it was contamination

347
00:20:49,870 --> 00:20:51,630
and still found the same.

348
00:20:51,870 --> 00:20:57,470
Um, and what we've realized since then is these cells come over quite early in pregnancy

349
00:20:57,470 --> 00:20:59,390
before you even know you're pregnant.

350
00:21:00,190 --> 00:21:06,160
And so you could have been had a really early spontaneous miscarriage, never knew about

351
00:21:06,160 --> 00:21:08,960
it and had cells seeded into your body.

352
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:09,440
Wow.

353
00:21:09,680 --> 00:21:10,560
Um wow.

354
00:21:11,120 --> 00:21:17,120
We also learned that obviously you can have that effect if it's twinning

355
00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:20,080
in utero, and then the twin doesn't.

356
00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:20,720
Right.

357
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:26,640
But there's this really nice study looking at um um these

358
00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:32,470
girl Danish girls and showing that they it was before they went through

359
00:21:32,470 --> 00:21:33,270
menarchy.

360
00:21:33,350 --> 00:21:38,230
So before they had an opportunity or chance to be pregnant, and they still found Y

361
00:21:38,390 --> 00:21:40,710
chromosome in in their blood.

362
00:21:40,790 --> 00:21:46,150
And what they've found suggested was maybe it was from their older brothers.

363
00:21:47,670 --> 00:21:51,830
So our cells are going into our mother.

364
00:21:52,070 --> 00:21:52,710
Oh wow.

365
00:21:52,950 --> 00:21:53,270
Right?

366
00:21:53,510 --> 00:21:54,150
Yeah.

367
00:21:54,790 --> 00:21:59,110
And so the older sibs could actually be seated with.

368
00:22:00,740 --> 00:22:01,140
yes.

369
00:22:01,380 --> 00:22:01,940
Wow.

370
00:22:02,340 --> 00:22:07,780
So there's the the the tr the family tree gets very

371
00:22:08,980 --> 00:22:11,780
the very big, yeah, very big after that.

372
00:22:11,940 --> 00:22:12,740
So Yeah.

373
00:22:12,980 --> 00:22:16,260
And and have we gotten to microchimerism yet?

374
00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:17,620
Or are we still walking to that?

375
00:22:17,700 --> 00:22:20,900
Because I don't know, I don't know exactly what the definition No no, don't apologize.

376
00:22:20,980 --> 00:22:26,740
I'm just yeah, I'm curious like what is that are those Y chromosomes in the female's body?

377
00:22:27,060 --> 00:22:29,220
Is that an example of microchimerism?

378
00:22:29,630 --> 00:22:30,510
It is, yes.

379
00:22:30,670 --> 00:22:30,830
Okay.

380
00:22:31,310 --> 00:22:31,870
Yes.

381
00:22:32,030 --> 00:22:36,590
Um, we're still working on the definition definition of it because some people would argue

382
00:22:36,750 --> 00:22:40,830
just because you can detect a gene doesn't mean it's a cell.

383
00:22:41,070 --> 00:22:46,030
It could just again be a byproduct of a cell, where is it coming from?

384
00:22:46,350 --> 00:22:50,030
Is is microchimerism does it have to be an attack cell?

385
00:22:50,190 --> 00:22:51,550
Does it have to persist?

386
00:22:51,710 --> 00:22:57,580
Does it have to do things where we're actually struggling, not struggling, but debating

387
00:22:57,580 --> 00:23:00,140
as a community what the actual definition is.

388
00:23:00,220 --> 00:23:06,060
But yeah, what we're getting to is microchimerism is a small amount, small

389
00:23:06,060 --> 00:23:11,660
micro of chimeric that's different, different genome within you.

390
00:23:12,140 --> 00:23:16,940
And we are all microchimeric because we're all mammals.

391
00:23:17,430 --> 00:23:22,870
And in the genes, I mean, you know, uh I mean you and we talked about how Jurassic Park is

392
00:23:22,870 --> 00:23:23,670
one of our favorite movies.

393
00:23:23,830 --> 00:23:23,990
Yes.

394
00:23:24,230 --> 00:23:29,190
Um obviously everybody knows that like genes code for proteins that builds the animals or

395
00:23:29,190 --> 00:23:31,190
organisms, din dinosaurs, for example.

396
00:23:31,350 --> 00:23:37,190
Um, but um but why is that significant that the genes are there?

397
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:40,480
like because you could just imagine, well, yeah, the genes are there.

398
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:44,880
Like the null hypothesis is sort of like, well, yeah, there's like leakage of cells.

399
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:45,600
Who cares?

400
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:46,160
Right.

401
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:47,280
Like it's yeah.

402
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:49,440
So yes.

403
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,360
Uh I think it's really, yeah, it's important for a few different reasons.

404
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:58,480
One, um, the genes are there and the immune system is not getting rid of them.

405
00:23:58,790 --> 00:23:59,270
Why?

406
00:23:59,590 --> 00:23:59,830
Right.

407
00:23:59,990 --> 00:24:02,470
Oh, because we've learned self, non-self.

408
00:24:02,710 --> 00:24:04,950
You like that's immunology 101.

409
00:24:05,030 --> 00:24:09,910
Anything that that's why we can't have these large-scale organ transplants that from

410
00:24:09,910 --> 00:24:10,870
anyone, right?

411
00:24:11,270 --> 00:24:15,270
Um, even if it's from a sibling, you still have issues, right?

412
00:24:15,350 --> 00:24:16,790
You have to have immunosuppression.

413
00:24:16,870 --> 00:24:20,070
So why is the immune system fine with this?

414
00:24:20,310 --> 00:24:25,860
Um and then the other thing is um we're realizing sometimes the immune system is not

415
00:24:25,860 --> 00:24:26,900
fine with this.

416
00:24:27,780 --> 00:24:32,900
So women, excuse me, are at a higher risk of developing autoimmune

417
00:24:32,900 --> 00:24:33,940
diseases.

418
00:24:35,220 --> 00:24:41,140
And some of the idea is that it could be these paternal genes

419
00:24:41,300 --> 00:24:46,900
expressed through these baby cells that are triggering an immune response.

420
00:24:48,050 --> 00:24:48,690
Wow.

421
00:24:49,810 --> 00:24:50,610
That's fascinating.

422
00:24:50,770 --> 00:24:56,530
I mean, so that that would predict a higher prevalence of autoimmune

423
00:24:56,530 --> 00:25:00,770
diseases among women who have uh microchimerism.

424
00:25:00,850 --> 00:25:03,090
So have, say, Y chromosomes that can be detected.

425
00:25:03,330 --> 00:25:03,490
Yes.

426
00:25:03,650 --> 00:25:06,370
Um is that, I mean, uh has that prediction been tested?

427
00:25:07,410 --> 00:25:09,570
It's been looked at uh often.

428
00:25:09,730 --> 00:25:15,570
And so I can I can say autoimmune diseases are complex and there's many pathways to them,

429
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:16,040
right?

430
00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:18,840
And so you could just have a genetic predisposition.

431
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:24,360
We know individuals that develop autoimmune diseases in their early ages before pregnancy.

432
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:26,520
There's men that develop autoimmune diseases.

433
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:30,920
Like this is this is not the answer to autoimmune diseases.

434
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:36,600
But along with the genetic predisposition, there are a few papers showing

435
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:41,730
that yes, but it matters on your genetic makeup.

436
00:25:41,890 --> 00:25:47,890
One, you I'm gonna simplify it as you have to be predisposed to the autoimmune disease,

437
00:25:48,130 --> 00:25:48,450
right?

438
00:25:48,850 --> 00:25:54,370
And then you have to be exposed to a certain paternal allele.

439
00:25:54,530 --> 00:25:58,770
Not all per paternal alleles, but certain ones can trigger that reaction.

440
00:25:58,930 --> 00:26:03,410
So it's like the perfect match to create the autoimmune disease.

441
00:26:04,380 --> 00:26:10,060
And so, yes, I think there's pretty good data to show that in those scenarios it can

442
00:26:10,060 --> 00:26:12,060
trigger the reaction.

443
00:26:14,540 --> 00:26:15,980
Fascinating stuff.

444
00:26:16,220 --> 00:26:21,020
Um so we've gotten to maternal fetal conflict, we've gotten to

445
00:26:21,020 --> 00:26:22,780
microchimerism.

446
00:26:23,020 --> 00:26:23,420
Yes.

447
00:26:23,660 --> 00:26:28,790
Um there's still another area of your research that I'm very curious about, which is uh

448
00:26:28,950 --> 00:26:31,510
cancer and the evolution of cancer.

449
00:26:32,310 --> 00:26:37,430
Um from an evolutionary perspective, it makes a lot of sense to me why we we would be

450
00:26:37,430 --> 00:26:41,270
vulnerable to pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

451
00:26:41,590 --> 00:26:45,900
Um, because the bacteria and viruses, they win in some sense.

452
00:26:46,060 --> 00:26:48,700
Like they're evolving to invade us and exploit us.

453
00:26:48,860 --> 00:26:51,420
Um, whereas with their tool, we're their food.

454
00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:51,660
Yeah.

455
00:26:52,060 --> 00:26:52,780
They want to eat us.

456
00:26:53,340 --> 00:26:54,940
They want to eat us and have babies.

457
00:26:55,020 --> 00:26:55,820
That's their goal.

458
00:26:56,380 --> 00:26:56,780
Totally.

459
00:26:56,940 --> 00:26:58,620
Uh yeah, and we're just at odds.

460
00:26:58,780 --> 00:27:01,180
Um so that I can wrap my head around.

461
00:27:01,340 --> 00:27:05,580
But cancer is a little more mysterious and hard for me to have my wrap my head around

462
00:27:05,660 --> 00:27:08,140
because those are my cells and they're hurting me.

463
00:27:08,300 --> 00:27:09,660
What are they why are they doing that?

464
00:27:09,820 --> 00:27:12,700
And how why hasn't evolution gotten rid of that?

465
00:27:14,150 --> 00:27:15,510
I love this question.

466
00:27:15,750 --> 00:27:17,030
Um okay.

467
00:27:17,430 --> 00:27:20,390
Um we we have a few answers for you.

468
00:27:20,550 --> 00:27:25,750
Um one is we cells had to suppress their

469
00:27:26,070 --> 00:27:29,910
own interest to become a multicellular body, right?

470
00:27:30,230 --> 00:27:34,150
We used to be single-celled organisms that could just multiply.

471
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:38,480
We started having to cooperate once we became a multicellular body.

472
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:44,560
And you suppress your cellular fitness for the multicellular fitness, right?

473
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:46,080
That's crazy.

474
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:47,040
It's so cool.

475
00:27:47,120 --> 00:27:47,680
It's such a weird.

476
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:52,800
I mean, it makes total sense when you say it out loud, but it's such a I mean, as a macro,

477
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:59,490
a macro, a micro, a multicellular organism myself, I find it it's it's counter to my

478
00:27:59,490 --> 00:28:00,370
personal experience.

479
00:28:00,690 --> 00:28:02,530
That would that is tautological, right?

480
00:28:02,610 --> 00:28:03,650
But no, that's amazing.

481
00:28:04,050 --> 00:28:04,450
Yes, exactly.

482
00:28:04,770 --> 00:28:04,930
Yes.

483
00:28:05,410 --> 00:28:11,090
And and we have conservation of genes that have persisted since we were

484
00:28:11,090 --> 00:28:12,450
single-cell organisms.

485
00:28:12,690 --> 00:28:14,850
And so some of that is still in there, right?

486
00:28:15,490 --> 00:28:17,970
And so we have these multicellular organisms.

487
00:28:18,050 --> 00:28:22,930
And you know, the bigger you get, the more cells you get, um, the better you are at

488
00:28:22,930 --> 00:28:25,970
competing for mates and resources and all this stuff.

489
00:28:26,210 --> 00:28:31,820
And so in certain organisms, it's in your best interest to have a lot of cells, right?

490
00:28:32,700 --> 00:28:35,580
And cancer is a disease of cells.

491
00:28:35,820 --> 00:28:36,140
Okay.

492
00:28:37,020 --> 00:28:42,540
And when you have a lot of them, you end up having to control them and they end up when

493
00:28:42,540 --> 00:28:48,460
they're proliferating, mutating, and causing mutations that knock out their

494
00:28:48,750 --> 00:28:50,990
basically cooperative behaviors.

495
00:28:51,230 --> 00:28:53,230
And they become selfish again.

496
00:28:53,550 --> 00:28:55,470
And they start dividing.

497
00:28:55,710 --> 00:29:01,150
And then there's a different selection going on there where they're now

498
00:29:02,030 --> 00:29:07,310
dividing for their own self-interest instead of the interest of the

499
00:29:07,310 --> 00:29:09,150
multicellular organism.

500
00:29:10,340 --> 00:29:11,940
And that oh go ahead.

501
00:29:12,260 --> 00:29:12,740
Oh, sorry.

502
00:29:12,900 --> 00:29:18,500
And the reason that we don't get rid of it is because there's trade-offs in that.

503
00:29:18,580 --> 00:29:23,380
There's selection for growth and survival and reproduction.

504
00:29:23,460 --> 00:29:28,500
And we see these genes that are important for cancer are sometimes important for

505
00:29:28,500 --> 00:29:30,500
implantation and fertilization.

506
00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:35,390
And so they're getting selected early and then they get turned back on later on.

507
00:29:35,950 --> 00:29:36,430
Wow.

508
00:29:37,070 --> 00:29:41,710
Would this be an example of I uh I think it's Peter Medouar came up with his theory of

509
00:29:41,710 --> 00:29:47,550
aging, where the idea is that genes that might give you a fitness advantage early in life

510
00:29:47,630 --> 00:29:52,590
but impose a fitness cost later in life will be selected for in an organism.

511
00:29:52,670 --> 00:29:58,640
And insofar as those genes accumulate over time, uh the genome will accumulate uh features

512
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:04,640
that will sort of cause the body to break down uh in late age uh the further the organism

513
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:10,400
gets past reproduction and and the the further away from the window of selection that that

514
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:12,880
um evolution will be focusing on.

515
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:16,480
Um I I always found that theory of aging really fascinating.

516
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:20,400
It seems like this might be an example of that, where genes that that help you with

517
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:24,850
gestation or implantation early in life actually increase cancer risk later in life.

518
00:30:24,930 --> 00:30:29,330
And this would actually be an example of Medouarin aging.

519
00:30:29,890 --> 00:30:31,250
Yeah, and it is that.

520
00:30:31,330 --> 00:30:36,850
And what we see, and it's a little nuanced now because I think there the

521
00:30:37,250 --> 00:30:42,290
we're humans and we do things that increase our risk of cancer through our lifestyle, like

522
00:30:42,290 --> 00:30:46,690
as smoking and you know, various other things, being out in the sun too much.

523
00:30:47,250 --> 00:30:50,210
But in general, cancer is a disease of aging.

524
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:56,800
It is, if you look across many different populations, it's an old age disease,

525
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:57,200
right?

526
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:03,040
And it's after basically those soma and and the mutations have

527
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:04,080
accumulated.

528
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:05,440
Um, but that's not it.

529
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:10,560
It's not just mutation accumulation, because there's been some really great studies that

530
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:16,400
look at like normal healthy tissue, and they have like the mutation profile of

531
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:17,280
a cancer.

532
00:31:18,110 --> 00:31:23,870
And so along with the mutations, there's a breakdown in the body as we age,

533
00:31:24,030 --> 00:31:24,350
right?

534
00:31:24,590 --> 00:31:27,230
And so suddenly our immune system isn't working as well.

535
00:31:27,310 --> 00:31:29,310
Our immune system can clean it all out.

536
00:31:30,270 --> 00:31:32,110
The tissue fitness matters.

537
00:31:32,190 --> 00:31:35,390
And so suddenly the cancer cells have a competitive edge.

538
00:31:35,710 --> 00:31:39,790
Right now, when the cancer cells are in a multicellular body of a really healthy

539
00:31:39,790 --> 00:31:45,380
individual, and I say healthy, but a a young individual that has, you know, good luck

540
00:31:45,540 --> 00:31:50,180
too, um, the neighboring cells actually can suppress it.

541
00:31:50,740 --> 00:31:56,260
But suddenly the neighboring cells get older as well, and the tissue fitness landscape

542
00:31:56,260 --> 00:31:56,820
changes.

543
00:31:56,900 --> 00:32:02,810
And that's when cancer cells suddenly have a competitive edge and kind of outcompete the

544
00:32:02,970 --> 00:32:05,930
the the healthy non-cancerous tissue.

545
00:32:06,650 --> 00:32:10,650
Is this why is there uh I mean this seems like a dumb question, but is there evidence that

546
00:32:10,650 --> 00:32:15,850
exercise helps or prevent cancer in the sense of like I always hear Dan Lieberman quote of

547
00:32:15,930 --> 00:32:18,490
like diseases of old age are diseases of sedentism.

548
00:32:18,570 --> 00:32:22,890
Like, you know, and if you look at populations that are more active all sequel.

549
00:32:23,130 --> 00:32:24,010
Is that true?

550
00:32:24,570 --> 00:32:26,010
Yeah, it's true with cancer too.

551
00:32:26,090 --> 00:32:26,730
It's not everything.

552
00:32:26,890 --> 00:32:28,780
Cancer is like genetics.

553
00:32:28,940 --> 00:32:32,940
You can have underlying genetics that just predispose you to it.

554
00:32:33,180 --> 00:32:34,220
Bad luck.

555
00:32:34,380 --> 00:32:36,540
But there's a lot of bad luck in cancer.

556
00:32:36,780 --> 00:32:41,100
And it's just you just like our our genomes, we got three billion base pairs.

557
00:32:41,260 --> 00:32:45,180
What mutations that land in an important cancer suppression gene?

558
00:32:45,340 --> 00:32:45,500
Yeah.

559
00:32:45,820 --> 00:32:47,500
Sometimes just bad luck, right?

560
00:32:48,140 --> 00:32:51,170
Um, and then the other component is lifestyle.

561
00:32:51,330 --> 00:32:57,010
And so they do see yes, exercise is a huge impact on

562
00:32:57,010 --> 00:32:59,490
being protective against against cancer.

563
00:32:59,810 --> 00:33:05,090
And presumably that's like the the immune system and maybe health of cells sort of

564
00:33:05,970 --> 00:33:09,410
if to again gloss a lot, but that's sort of gloss a lot.

565
00:33:09,490 --> 00:33:14,530
And then in general, exercise, even though it could be like while you're exercising, it's

566
00:33:14,530 --> 00:33:19,960
it's a acute inflammatory, it pulls in some

567
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:22,760
anti-inflammatory mechanisms afterwards.

568
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:27,480
And so again, our immune system is always our double-edged sword where it can help us fight

569
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:30,600
the things that are trying to eat us, the bacteria and the viruses.

570
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:36,040
But when it creates too much chaos, it also promotes these

571
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:41,370
cells to survive and thrive in in a cancer rich environment.

572
00:33:41,690 --> 00:33:41,850
Yeah.

573
00:33:42,010 --> 00:33:46,330
So when you're when you're studying this stuff, are you like have you been thinking so this

574
00:33:46,330 --> 00:33:48,250
sounds like a lot like the immune system is important.

575
00:33:48,330 --> 00:33:50,250
Like you talked about the immune system.

576
00:33:50,730 --> 00:33:56,570
So clearly like the immune system, there's been selection to keep these microchimeric cells

577
00:33:56,970 --> 00:34:02,410
in the body and the immune system is has evolved, co-evolved with the presence to allow

578
00:34:02,410 --> 00:34:02,570
them.

579
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:03,120
Yes.

580
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,960
I don't even know what my question is, but like what what's up with that?

581
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:08,080
I have an answer for that.

582
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:10,560
It's my new project.

583
00:34:10,720 --> 00:34:11,200
No cool.

584
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:12,960
I think, yes.

585
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:14,720
So we looked at cancer.

586
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,200
Um, I'm gonna take the long way there though.

587
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:22,400
Um so we looked at when cancer arose across a tree of life.

588
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:28,400
And so we see with most multicellular organisms, there's at least some evidence that they

589
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:31,950
can get cancer or cancer-like properties, okay?

590
00:34:32,110 --> 00:34:33,150
Even plants.

591
00:34:33,390 --> 00:34:38,910
While plants don't have a vascular system like we do, so it's not so

592
00:34:39,070 --> 00:34:40,030
impactful.

593
00:34:40,190 --> 00:34:46,030
Um, but once we get into maybe vertebrates or even you know, mammals, we

594
00:34:46,030 --> 00:34:49,150
see cancer that is prevalent across the tree.

595
00:34:49,230 --> 00:34:54,510
It's ubiquitous across many different animals, but the rates vary,

596
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:55,640
Right.

597
00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:01,400
And so I would argue that most organisms are not completely cancer resistant,

598
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:06,120
but some are actually really good at not getting cancer better than humans.

599
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:06,920
Right.

600
00:35:07,240 --> 00:35:12,600
And so if we look across the tree of life, we also see that mammals in particular

601
00:35:13,720 --> 00:35:19,450
get more cancer than other groups when we compare them to birds and

602
00:35:19,450 --> 00:35:22,570
lizards and various other organisms.

603
00:35:22,970 --> 00:35:28,010
And so what is it about mammals that makes us so different?

604
00:35:28,650 --> 00:35:34,570
Some of it is one where, you know, we have to internally gestate

605
00:35:34,650 --> 00:35:40,490
and we have placentas and placentas look very much like cancer in some sense

606
00:35:40,570 --> 00:35:45,610
because they invade and they recruit blood vessels and they

607
00:35:46,460 --> 00:35:49,340
do growth in the body.

608
00:35:49,420 --> 00:35:55,180
And so is it that because we're placental mammals, we

609
00:35:55,500 --> 00:35:57,980
also have this blind spot?

610
00:35:58,140 --> 00:36:03,500
And so one of the ideas is potentially, yes, maybe our immune system

611
00:36:03,820 --> 00:36:09,020
cannot be as robust as we'd like it to be,

612
00:36:09,830 --> 00:36:15,670
because we have to be able to recognize and be okay with different

613
00:36:15,670 --> 00:36:17,430
genomes being in our body.

614
00:36:18,630 --> 00:36:19,590
Amazing.

615
00:36:20,790 --> 00:36:22,390
That's just what I think though, by the way.

616
00:36:22,710 --> 00:36:24,870
No, that's it's not.

617
00:36:25,110 --> 00:36:28,230
I don't know if that's like a community wide consensus.

618
00:36:28,550 --> 00:36:29,910
That's a fascinating hypothesis.

619
00:36:30,020 --> 00:36:30,260
Yeah.

620
00:36:30,340 --> 00:36:34,500
I and also I like I my understanding is like and maybe this is just noise, but like things

621
00:36:34,500 --> 00:36:39,300
like like dogs, like certain dogs get like like labs get really high rates of cancer.

622
00:36:39,700 --> 00:36:45,700
Um and you know, I it's in you know the in the placenta like grows really fast

623
00:36:45,780 --> 00:36:46,020
too.

624
00:36:46,180 --> 00:36:51,670
Like, you know, I mean it a lot of this feels like it's the a lot of it is sort of maybe

625
00:36:51,670 --> 00:36:53,510
developmental things too.

626
00:36:53,590 --> 00:36:57,990
So like the immune system has this issue of like, is this a developing offspring?

627
00:36:58,230 --> 00:37:01,590
Is this my development, or is it cancer?

628
00:37:01,750 --> 00:37:03,750
That's a hard problem, right?

629
00:37:03,990 --> 00:37:04,230
Yes.

630
00:37:04,470 --> 00:37:05,350
To tease it.

631
00:37:05,430 --> 00:37:05,670
Yes.

632
00:37:05,830 --> 00:37:06,070
Yeah.

633
00:37:06,390 --> 00:37:06,710
Yes.

634
00:37:06,790 --> 00:37:07,110
Yes.

635
00:37:07,270 --> 00:37:09,350
Um no and dogs do get more cancer.

636
00:37:09,430 --> 00:37:10,310
They're domesticated.

637
00:37:10,470 --> 00:37:12,550
We think a lot of it has to do with like inbreeding.

638
00:37:12,630 --> 00:37:14,470
So a lot of the domesticated species.

639
00:37:14,550 --> 00:37:20,320
And so we bred them to look real cute, but they came with a a baggage in their genetic

640
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:26,160
you know predisposition for disease in general um other species that get a lot of cancer

641
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:31,760
are like ferrets and hamsters we think there is we have this like life history perspective

642
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:36,960
when we're studying cancer where we think like these fast life history strategies that just

643
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:42,590
go reproduce live shortly you will not evolve defenses against

644
00:37:42,590 --> 00:37:44,430
cancer because you're not living long enough.

645
00:37:44,510 --> 00:37:46,830
You're going to get, you know, eaten by a hawk, right?

646
00:37:47,070 --> 00:37:47,390
Right.

647
00:37:47,790 --> 00:37:52,190
And then on the other end, you have these species such as humans, but also elephants and

648
00:37:52,190 --> 00:37:54,990
whales that grow really big and slowly.

649
00:37:55,150 --> 00:38:00,670
Um, it's in their best interest to maintain their soma, you know, and that means also

650
00:38:00,910 --> 00:38:02,350
cancer defense, right?

651
00:38:02,430 --> 00:38:07,760
Like making sure you're dividing your cells carefully, there's no mutations, you have in

652
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:13,840
you know enhanced immune activity and various things to prune cancer like cells from

653
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:14,240
them.

654
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:20,880
Is is there any um is there any evidence that like these immune responses or the micro

655
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:26,800
the genetics of offspring, you know, what consequences other than the

656
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:28,560
immune system lets them exist?

657
00:38:28,720 --> 00:38:32,240
I mean, it sounds like this might be the edge of science, or we don't know.

658
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:38,670
What what do we know of like what consequence they're having on the on the

659
00:38:38,670 --> 00:38:40,910
mother or on us, you know?

660
00:38:41,070 --> 00:38:42,670
Like do we know?

661
00:38:43,230 --> 00:38:44,990
Uh yeah, we don't know.

662
00:38:45,070 --> 00:38:46,910
Um there's a few papers.

663
00:38:47,070 --> 00:38:52,430
So going back to I love that we're jumping from sometimes people think I study these two

664
00:38:52,750 --> 00:38:56,910
very distinct topics, but we're yeah, no, it seems like uh it's all related.

665
00:38:57,390 --> 00:38:58,110
They relate.

666
00:38:59,150 --> 00:39:04,940
So um yeah, the the fetal cell, there's some really great studies to show the

667
00:39:04,940 --> 00:39:10,620
mother is sending cells to the baby that are c clearly important for immune education.

668
00:39:11,180 --> 00:39:15,660
There's, you know, passive immunity through antibodies being sent to the baby, right?

669
00:39:15,820 --> 00:39:20,300
That are really important for survival, especially if it's like an infection that's

670
00:39:20,300 --> 00:39:22,220
happening in real time, right?

671
00:39:22,460 --> 00:39:25,660
But also immune cells are going to the baby as well.

672
00:39:25,890 --> 00:39:30,370
That's an amazing, you know, the immune system is completely naive for the baby, and the

673
00:39:30,370 --> 00:39:35,090
mom has already had this lifetime experience of exposure and is now passing cells on.

674
00:39:35,410 --> 00:39:38,210
And then is that through placenta and breast milk?

675
00:39:38,530 --> 00:39:38,850
Yes.

676
00:39:39,090 --> 00:39:39,410
Okay.

677
00:39:39,890 --> 00:39:40,290
Nice.

678
00:39:40,850 --> 00:39:41,090
Yes.

679
00:39:41,330 --> 00:39:45,090
It goes through the placenta and then again through through the breast milk.

680
00:39:45,170 --> 00:39:47,330
Um, there's maternal cells being passed on.

681
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,320
Fetal cells get a little bit trickier because those are the baby cells going to the mother.

682
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:51,720
Right.

683
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:56,680
What the heck could they be doing that could actually impact the mother's survival and

684
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:58,040
reproductive success?

685
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:03,480
Um, and again, like you had mentioned, it could be like just this burst of young stem cells

686
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:09,960
that and and there's some data to show potentially yes, or some mouse models that show

687
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:14,790
that these cells can track to sites of injury and help repair it.

688
00:40:15,030 --> 00:40:20,390
There's um these, there was one paper that showed they looked at women in their C-section

689
00:40:20,550 --> 00:40:24,390
scars and they were able to find baby cells, fetal cells there.

690
00:40:24,550 --> 00:40:29,110
And they were like expressing collagen, which is really important for you know healing the

691
00:40:29,110 --> 00:40:29,830
C-section.

692
00:40:30,230 --> 00:40:36,070
So yeah, some of it is maybe these, it's just a burst of new cells, like uh, you

693
00:40:36,070 --> 00:40:36,390
know.

694
00:40:36,790 --> 00:40:42,480
Um, and there's one paper out looking again, broad broad scale at like

695
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:44,240
male origin microchimerism.

696
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:50,080
So not even like being specific about the baby, but just looking at Y chromosome in

697
00:40:50,240 --> 00:40:50,640
women.

698
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:56,720
And they found women decades later that tested positive for male origin

699
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:58,880
microchimerism lived longer.

700
00:40:59,200 --> 00:40:59,840
Wow.

701
00:41:00,240 --> 00:41:03,120
So there could be some potential benefits.

702
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:08,810
And we don't know, we don't know why some women we can detect these

703
00:41:08,810 --> 00:41:13,850
cells in them and other times we cannot detect any cells after they've given birth.

704
00:41:14,090 --> 00:41:19,690
I think it's more our method method methodology of not being able to detect rare

705
00:41:19,690 --> 00:41:21,850
cells than them not being there.

706
00:41:21,930 --> 00:41:26,650
But yeah and how how new I mean this sound like as you alluded to earlier it sounds like

707
00:41:26,650 --> 00:41:32,490
this is very much this uh science is very much dependent on genetic sequencing being

708
00:41:32,490 --> 00:41:35,780
faster and cheaper or How how old is this?

709
00:41:35,860 --> 00:41:40,340
I mean, you said we know we've done some of these things, but like, has is this a case

710
00:41:40,340 --> 00:41:46,100
where the change in technology has allowed this research area to proliferate such that it's

711
00:41:46,100 --> 00:41:49,700
now feasible to do this at scale?

712
00:41:49,940 --> 00:41:50,100
Yeah.

713
00:41:50,580 --> 00:41:51,540
Yeah, absolutely.

714
00:41:51,700 --> 00:41:56,420
Like it was, you know, 100 years ago we knew that this with potential that cells were

715
00:41:56,420 --> 00:41:57,220
coming over.

716
00:41:57,620 --> 00:42:02,820
Everyone just thought it again was a byproduct of this spillover effect, right?

717
00:42:03,060 --> 00:42:06,290
Of of being a deeply invasive placenta.

718
00:42:06,530 --> 00:42:11,010
Um, and it wasn't until like the early 90s, I believe, was the first paper that showed, oh

719
00:42:11,090 --> 00:42:13,090
no, these cells stay around.

720
00:42:13,330 --> 00:42:14,930
And that like had a mind shift.

721
00:42:15,170 --> 00:42:17,810
Suddenly, evolutionary biologists were interested in it too.

722
00:42:17,970 --> 00:42:21,410
Like, wait, like these cells are persisting.

723
00:42:21,810 --> 00:42:23,650
Do they have a function?

724
00:42:23,970 --> 00:42:28,380
And is it a function that's important for that body actually?

725
00:42:28,620 --> 00:42:30,540
Do we and have we co-evolved it?

726
00:42:30,700 --> 00:42:35,900
So we expect that right um relationship to to happen.

727
00:42:36,140 --> 00:42:41,820
So and then if uh if I can have my mother's um

728
00:42:42,060 --> 00:42:44,780
cells in me, can I have my grandmother's cells in me?

729
00:42:44,940 --> 00:42:45,260
Yes.

730
00:42:45,500 --> 00:42:49,710
We think so there's one paper that has shown it, right?

731
00:42:50,110 --> 00:42:52,750
But of course there's this route, you know.

732
00:42:52,990 --> 00:42:58,270
Um and there's one paper that showed that yeah, grandmother cells were in the cord blood.

733
00:42:58,510 --> 00:43:00,990
So we think that that's possible.

734
00:43:01,070 --> 00:43:06,910
And you can imagine a scenario where there's a group of cells that just get really good at

735
00:43:06,910 --> 00:43:08,910
jumping generation to generation.

736
00:43:09,070 --> 00:43:09,390
Yeah.

737
00:43:09,630 --> 00:43:10,190
Right.

738
00:43:10,430 --> 00:43:14,670
Um and it can go on for potentially a really long time.

739
00:43:14,990 --> 00:43:15,310
Yeah.

740
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:15,760
Yeah.

741
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:17,840
It's sort of beautiful in a way, right?

742
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:18,880
It's it's yeah.

743
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,160
I I to to be slightly like uh poetic about it.

744
00:43:22,240 --> 00:43:23,680
But yeah, there's something cool about that.

745
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:24,000
Yeah.

746
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:24,320
Yeah.

747
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:24,640
Yeah.

748
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:30,400
You literally have a you know bits of your your grandma in you, potentially like Yes.

749
00:43:30,720 --> 00:43:34,800
I know and and then you hear things like, Oh, she looks a lot like grandma.

750
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:38,320
Like there's a cousin, you know, and the cousin's like, they look a lot like grandma.

751
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:43,950
And I'm like, what if what if it was more grammar than we know oh yeah for me

752
00:43:44,270 --> 00:43:49,230
because these cells are coming over what's the what's the potential that it can actually

753
00:43:49,230 --> 00:43:54,830
like be a part of the germline or insert really early into development um

754
00:43:55,150 --> 00:44:01,150
and yeah have you know more of a chimerism effect than

755
00:44:01,150 --> 00:44:02,910
a microchimerism effect.

756
00:44:04,200 --> 00:44:09,400
It's like painting such a messier picture of nature than what I might be accustomed to,

757
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:14,120
where it's just like these cells and DNA strands are just sloshing around and I still got

758
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:15,320
bits of my grandma in me.

759
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,680
Like it's just so much messier than than I would think.

760
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:19,080
I don't know.

761
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:22,680
It's it's yeah, horizontal transmission really screws me up too.

762
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,880
Like if we if when you add that in, you're like, oh my god.

763
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:26,120
Yeah.

764
00:44:28,370 --> 00:44:30,850
this might seem like a dumb question, but I'm curious.

765
00:44:31,010 --> 00:44:36,530
Um would you expect differences between mammals and marsupial mammals where the

766
00:44:36,530 --> 00:44:38,770
gestation isn't quite as internal?

767
00:44:39,170 --> 00:44:44,770
Uh would you expect, say, less microchimerism, less autoimmune diseases, perhaps less

768
00:44:44,770 --> 00:44:45,410
cancer?

769
00:44:46,930 --> 00:44:48,370
This is a great question.

770
00:44:48,530 --> 00:44:50,610
Um we we're trying to look at that.

771
00:44:50,690 --> 00:44:54,210
Um we don't know if there's microchimerism in marsupials.

772
00:44:54,370 --> 00:44:55,490
I think there is.

773
00:44:55,720 --> 00:45:00,520
I'm I've I've had some leads on some mars marsupial blood before, but we haven't had a

774
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:01,720
chance to look at it.

775
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,520
Um, but but potentially.

776
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:10,520
Um, and then the other thing that is complicated is yeah, you could maybe

777
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:14,120
suggest um less cancer.

778
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:20,270
So there's marsupials that have a very um placenta-like structure

779
00:45:20,430 --> 00:45:23,230
that's really quick, and then they go to the pouch, right?

780
00:45:23,470 --> 00:45:29,470
And then across mammals, there's basically three different invasion types of placentas

781
00:45:29,710 --> 00:45:35,550
from a very um surface invasion to some kind of integration into

782
00:45:35,790 --> 00:45:37,550
a superinvasive placenta.

783
00:45:37,630 --> 00:45:42,640
And it's assumed that organisms that have the super invasive placenta have the most

784
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:43,680
microchimerism.

785
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:49,920
And there's also predictions that those organism or those organisms have the

786
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:50,880
most cancer.

787
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:52,960
Like there's a stepwise.

788
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:57,440
The more invasive a placenta gets, the more cancer we should see.

789
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:00,000
We do not see that in my data.

790
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:00,480
No.

791
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:02,160
It's like a really nice theory.

792
00:46:02,240 --> 00:46:04,480
It's in evolutionary medicine textbooks.

793
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:06,240
It's much messier than that.

794
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:12,310
And so with the marsupials, what we see is that um they

795
00:46:12,310 --> 00:46:17,990
could have went through some genetic bottlenecks and um actually

796
00:46:18,390 --> 00:46:24,230
um some of them get a lot of cancer but it might have nothing to do

797
00:46:24,230 --> 00:46:29,430
with their relationship with the placenta it could be just other factors

798
00:46:29,940 --> 00:46:32,820
And actually, um, the Tasmanian Devils.

799
00:46:32,980 --> 00:46:35,060
Have you heard of the Tasmanian Devils?

800
00:46:35,300 --> 00:46:38,420
Well, I've seen Looney Tunes, so yes, I'm totally familiar with it.

801
00:46:38,900 --> 00:46:39,300
Yes.

802
00:46:39,620 --> 00:46:45,540
These these creatures actually, they're

803
00:46:45,540 --> 00:46:50,820
not like the Looney Tunes character in the sense that they spin all around, but they are a

804
00:46:50,820 --> 00:46:53,860
little crazy in that in their they're very bitey creatures.

805
00:46:55,060 --> 00:46:58,900
And they have developed a transmissible cancer.

806
00:46:59,330 --> 00:46:59,890
Whoa.

807
00:47:00,610 --> 00:47:06,290
So that is they have a tumor on their face that existed on a devil hundreds of

808
00:47:06,290 --> 00:47:09,410
years ago, um, and it still persists.

809
00:47:09,490 --> 00:47:14,930
And they just transfer cells, not a virus, cancer cells from an

810
00:47:15,250 --> 00:47:17,570
individual that is no longer alive.

811
00:47:17,810 --> 00:47:18,450
Whoa.

812
00:47:18,770 --> 00:47:22,920
And it's pretty uh detrimental to the Tasmanian doubles.

813
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:25,720
They may go extinct because of this.

814
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:32,120
Um not only once has this evolved, but now there's a

815
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,960
second strain of transmissible cancer.

816
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:41,400
So again, it's cancer cells that are hopping from host to host to host.

817
00:47:41,720 --> 00:47:41,880
Wow.

818
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:47,800
And they can't, um it wouldn't does it cross species, like if a Tasmanian double bit uh on

819
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:51,070
their organism, it's not it has not crossed species.

820
00:47:51,150 --> 00:47:54,830
There's transmissible cancers in bivalves too, like muscles.

821
00:47:54,990 --> 00:47:55,790
Oh wow.

822
00:47:56,110 --> 00:47:58,030
And those have crossed species.

823
00:47:58,350 --> 00:47:58,750
Wow.

824
00:47:58,990 --> 00:48:04,270
Oh man, I mean that's a great topic for a the next pandemic movie is a contagious cancer

825
00:48:04,750 --> 00:48:05,070
right?

826
00:48:05,550 --> 00:48:05,870
Yes.

827
00:48:06,190 --> 00:48:08,110
Gets spread from the Tasmanian devil.

828
00:48:08,430 --> 00:48:10,030
Well, you have to be bitey, right?

829
00:48:10,110 --> 00:48:14,030
Like we've talked a lot about like why don't we have contagious cancer, right?

830
00:48:14,430 --> 00:48:19,400
And there dogs have uh contagious cancer as well, and it's sexually transmitted.

831
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,120
Um, and it's treatable.

832
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:27,720
Um, but it's from a dog that again lived like 10,000 years ago, and the cells still

833
00:48:27,720 --> 00:48:28,280
persist.

834
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,280
Yeah, it's really mind blowing.

835
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:36,200
Um, but um yeah, the the routes to transmission, if you

836
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:42,170
wanted to pass cancer cells back and forth, you need to either be bitey or

837
00:48:42,170 --> 00:48:45,530
it has to be a sexually transmitted type of thing, right?

838
00:48:45,770 --> 00:48:46,090
Right.

839
00:48:46,250 --> 00:48:48,570
Um so is the clam biting people?

840
00:48:48,890 --> 00:48:52,730
No, but well here's the other thing that or you live in the ocean.

841
00:48:53,050 --> 00:48:53,930
Uh right, of course.

842
00:48:54,090 --> 00:48:59,210
Because the 'cause you're like we're not just like sucking in cells as we move through our

843
00:48:59,210 --> 00:48:59,690
environment.

844
00:48:59,850 --> 00:49:00,810
Land, land animal.

845
00:49:01,210 --> 00:49:01,850
Oh yeah, that's true.

846
00:49:01,930 --> 00:49:04,650
Cause I always think about like you know, vectors, like mosquitoes.

847
00:49:04,810 --> 00:49:06,730
But yeah, the ocean is like a whole vector.

848
00:49:07,050 --> 00:49:07,930
It's a whole thing.

849
00:49:08,010 --> 00:49:09,530
It's a whole another world.

850
00:49:09,690 --> 00:49:10,170
Yes.

851
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:11,440
That's true.

852
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:16,000
Truly wild and bizarre this contagious face cancer business.

853
00:49:16,240 --> 00:49:20,480
Um it's like put that on a t shirt or something.

854
00:49:20,720 --> 00:49:21,760
It's very weird, yeah.

855
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:22,080
Yes.

856
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:28,160
Uh but I i I'm struggling to wrap my head around it because it it makes sense that cancer

857
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:32,720
might evolve in in me if I'm really old and my tissues are damaged, my immune system isn't

858
00:49:32,720 --> 00:49:37,040
so great, uh, and there's been a lot of time for the cells in my body to accumulate

859
00:49:37,150 --> 00:49:41,230
mutations that might serve the the self-interest of the cell at the expense of the rest of

860
00:49:41,230 --> 00:49:41,710
the body.

861
00:49:41,870 --> 00:49:46,430
And so it makes sense that my body might have a hard time tamping down on the cancer.

862
00:49:46,590 --> 00:49:50,110
But once it gets into someone else's body, particularly someone else who's young and

863
00:49:50,110 --> 00:49:51,870
healthy, then it's a whole different ballgame.

864
00:49:51,950 --> 00:49:55,550
And so how how does the cancer survive once it gets to someone else's body?

865
00:49:55,870 --> 00:49:56,190
Yeah.

866
00:49:56,430 --> 00:49:56,750
Yeah.

867
00:49:56,830 --> 00:50:00,990
So there's been studies looking at humans, and there's only been a few cases.

868
00:50:01,150 --> 00:50:03,480
One is transferring through pregnancy.

869
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:06,840
Unfortunately, cancers can metastasize.

870
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:11,000
Um, but other than that, we're pretty good at saying, no, that is not me.

871
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:15,640
Um, I, you know, I reject it, the immune system rejects it.

872
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:21,800
When it comes to the Tasmanian devils, um, and sorry, I'm I didn't complete

873
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:24,840
the the the full story because we talked about genetic bottlenecks.

874
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:29,590
Seems like the Tasmanian devils went through a genetic bottleneck and they have reduction

875
00:50:29,590 --> 00:50:33,510
of their MHC receptors, their self non-self receptors.

876
00:50:33,910 --> 00:50:39,830
And that reduced genetic diversity has allowed them to not be able to

877
00:50:39,830 --> 00:50:44,070
recognize that as non-self as much as it should.

878
00:50:44,310 --> 00:50:50,310
Um so unfortunately that was the it was like a combination, the perfect storm for the

879
00:50:50,310 --> 00:50:51,990
test, as you said.

880
00:50:52,070 --> 00:50:56,070
Like it's just this example of just a species level bad luck, basically.

881
00:50:56,390 --> 00:50:56,790
Exactly.

882
00:50:56,950 --> 00:50:57,190
Yeah.

883
00:50:57,350 --> 00:50:57,750
Yeah.

884
00:50:57,920 --> 00:50:58,240
Yeah.

885
00:50:58,480 --> 00:50:58,880
Wow.

886
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:03,600
I I love this new picture of of nature where just shit happens, there's bad luck, things

887
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,960
are sloshing around, everything's messy all over the place.

888
00:51:08,720 --> 00:51:10,160
And somehow we survive.

889
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:10,720
I know.

890
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:10,960
Yeah.

891
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:13,280
No, again, as a mach as a multicellular organism.

892
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,600
And we live for a really long time too.

893
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:17,120
Yeah, no, it's a miracle.

894
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:17,920
It's amazing.

895
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:19,520
All this anything works at all.

896
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:21,040
It's really Yes.

897
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:24,800
When you um uh you mentioned evolutionary medicine.

898
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:26,480
We haven't really talked about that.

899
00:51:27,370 --> 00:51:33,290
Um, you know, I don't want to go away from what you're an expert in or what you're, but can

900
00:51:33,290 --> 00:51:39,130
you talk about sort of like how you view I don't know, I don't even know enough about

901
00:51:39,370 --> 00:51:39,530
you.

902
00:51:39,690 --> 00:51:41,450
You're the expert in evolutionary medicine.

903
00:51:41,530 --> 00:51:45,850
You're sitting, you're you are an instance of sitting in that Venn diagram of basic

904
00:51:45,850 --> 00:51:47,770
research, and then people maybe doing medicine.

905
00:51:47,930 --> 00:51:52,300
Can you talk a little bit about that, and I don't even know what to ask because I don't

906
00:51:52,300 --> 00:51:52,860
know enough.

907
00:51:53,980 --> 00:51:54,540
Yes.

908
00:51:54,860 --> 00:51:55,900
For it's so funny.

909
00:51:56,140 --> 00:51:57,580
So I teach evolutionary medicine.

910
00:51:57,660 --> 00:51:59,820
I'm teaching it right now at UCSB.

911
00:51:59,980 --> 00:52:04,940
And the first day I always ask the students, even though there's a description, they don't

912
00:52:04,940 --> 00:52:05,980
know what the class is.

913
00:52:06,140 --> 00:52:06,780
Yeah.

914
00:52:07,260 --> 00:52:10,620
And I always ask them what they think evolutionary medicine is.

915
00:52:10,940 --> 00:52:15,020
And it says how evolution evolved over you know time.

916
00:52:15,190 --> 00:52:20,230
and it that's not what evolutionary medicine is how medicine changed over time yeah how

917
00:52:20,230 --> 00:52:25,350
medicine changed over time um but evolutionary medicine um

918
00:52:25,990 --> 00:52:31,830
is you know the the why we get sick okay so a lot of the medical field

919
00:52:31,910 --> 00:52:37,830
so I did my PhD in a med school and so it was a lot of the mechanisms you know

920
00:52:37,910 --> 00:52:43,200
this protein this gene this you know factor the you know, proximate

921
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:45,520
mechanisms of the disease.

922
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:50,800
And then evolutionary medicine takes a step back and says, well, why are we vulnerable in

923
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:51,680
the first place?

924
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:54,080
Why are we vulnerable to cancer?

925
00:52:54,240 --> 00:52:58,400
Why are we, you know, vulnerable to these specific diseases?

926
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:01,440
What is it in our evolutionary history or past?

927
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:02,880
Are there trade-offs?

928
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:06,800
Are there constraints that we're vulnerable for this sickness?

929
00:53:07,410 --> 00:53:10,530
And I think it's a really powerful way to view diseases.

930
00:53:10,770 --> 00:53:16,610
Some have argued that maybe it doesn't have such a practical impact sometimes,

931
00:53:16,690 --> 00:53:19,730
where it's like, oh, cool, it's because we're multicellular.

932
00:53:20,130 --> 00:53:21,410
Like, what now?

933
00:53:21,650 --> 00:53:21,890
Right.

934
00:53:22,290 --> 00:53:24,050
In terms of cancer.

935
00:53:24,210 --> 00:53:30,040
But then other times it does have a really um interesting point of view because then it's

936
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:35,640
like, oh, but other species that have also are multicellular get less

937
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:36,840
cancer than humans.

938
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:38,040
So what have they done?

939
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:43,320
So we can take this comparative approach when we're looking deep in the phylogenies.

940
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:48,760
But then also some really great ways evolutionary medicine is moving forward in like a

941
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:54,280
clinical sense is trying to understand both antibiotic resistance and

942
00:53:54,530 --> 00:53:59,970
chemotherapy resistance because they're following principles of evolution, right?

943
00:54:00,210 --> 00:54:05,970
Bacteria, we provide a selective pressure, they respond, they evolve resistance.

944
00:54:06,130 --> 00:54:08,370
Same thing with cancer cells, actually.

945
00:54:08,530 --> 00:54:12,530
That that mass that's in your body can start evolving, right?

946
00:54:12,770 --> 00:54:15,970
It's operating on principles of natural selection.

947
00:54:16,370 --> 00:54:22,200
And um, when it comes to treatment, we could maybe harness these principles of

948
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:26,920
evolution to do a better job at avoiding resistance.

949
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:32,200
Because the problem with medicine such as antibiotics or

950
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:36,680
chemotherapy, we hit a dead end when we hit resistance.

951
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:41,400
And we don't have any more drugs to provide the patient, right?

952
00:54:41,560 --> 00:54:45,930
Um, so if we could avoid resistance, we might be better off.

953
00:54:46,010 --> 00:54:48,730
Um, and the patient might do better.

954
00:54:48,970 --> 00:54:54,970
And so there's such great work looking at how you steer um the

955
00:54:54,970 --> 00:55:00,890
evolution of a bacteria population or a cancer cell population to

956
00:55:00,890 --> 00:55:04,650
where you want it to go in terms of their evolutionary trajectory.

957
00:55:04,820 --> 00:55:06,340
And I think that is so cool.

958
00:55:06,900 --> 00:55:10,340
So like domesticating the Yes, exactly.

959
00:55:11,060 --> 00:55:11,380
Yes.

960
00:55:11,540 --> 00:55:15,540
And there's all these ecologists that have jumped in, especially in the like cancer world,

961
00:55:15,620 --> 00:55:19,220
where it's like, okay, here's a scenario that I see in ecology.

962
00:55:19,460 --> 00:55:25,220
So you have, you know, a rabbit, right, that's out in the the savannah

963
00:55:25,300 --> 00:55:26,900
and there's a hawk coming for it.

964
00:55:27,060 --> 00:55:27,380
Okay.

965
00:55:27,540 --> 00:55:28,900
And so the rabbit, what does it do?

966
00:55:29,060 --> 00:55:30,420
It darts under a bush.

967
00:55:30,580 --> 00:55:32,100
Where are all the snakes?

968
00:55:32,250 --> 00:55:33,610
are hiding in the bush?

969
00:55:33,850 --> 00:55:34,330
Right.

970
00:55:34,650 --> 00:55:37,690
How do we do that same principle for cancer?

971
00:55:37,850 --> 00:55:43,610
Like how can we switch the ecology to end up tricking

972
00:55:43,610 --> 00:55:46,090
them into their own demise, basically?

973
00:55:46,570 --> 00:55:47,610
So like so yeah.

974
00:55:47,690 --> 00:55:51,530
So like an example just like concretely would be some I mean, like this is still I have no

975
00:55:51,930 --> 00:55:56,170
no idea, but just to make like make sure I understand, would be something like you have

976
00:55:56,170 --> 00:56:01,720
bacteria that feed on something, and you select for those

977
00:56:01,720 --> 00:56:07,480
bacteria that are really efficient at feeding on this thing, but then that thing that

978
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:13,400
you've selected those bacteria for, then if in a generation later is the

979
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:14,680
vehicle of drug delivery.

980
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:19,480
So you've selected for the bacteria that are super good at uptaking this material.

981
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:21,160
Let's give you all the resources.

982
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:25,640
And you Trojan horse the drug later, and then you're like boom, and they just take it up

983
00:56:25,640 --> 00:56:26,120
super well.

984
00:56:26,190 --> 00:56:26,430
Yeah.

985
00:56:26,670 --> 00:56:26,910
Yes.

986
00:56:27,070 --> 00:56:29,950
So there's these ideas circul circulating.

987
00:56:30,110 --> 00:56:35,550
Another one that's really prevalent um right now is actually let's give less drug.

988
00:56:36,910 --> 00:56:39,630
Let's not create resistance in the first place.

989
00:56:39,870 --> 00:56:44,990
Because what we realize, especially I'm gonna just gonna the same principles apply to both,

990
00:56:45,070 --> 00:56:50,860
but I'm just gonna talk about cancer biology is in a tumor, you have a bunch of cells

991
00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:55,580
that maybe can respond to the drug, but there's already cells that are resistant to the

992
00:56:55,580 --> 00:56:55,900
drug.

993
00:56:56,140 --> 00:57:01,580
And so you're benefiting the tumor if you kill all the cells that are responding to your

994
00:57:01,580 --> 00:57:01,900
drug.

995
00:57:02,060 --> 00:57:05,420
Because in the cells that are resistant, we have this competitive release.

996
00:57:05,580 --> 00:57:09,580
And then all of a sudden, oh no, your drug doesn't work anymore for that population.

997
00:57:09,820 --> 00:57:15,340
But what if you kept the resistant cells and the sensitive cells within the same

998
00:57:15,340 --> 00:57:18,890
tumor and they competed for resources.

999
00:57:20,730 --> 00:57:26,090
And what you did then was just knocked down the tumor smaller.

1000
00:57:26,330 --> 00:57:26,890
Wow.

1001
00:57:27,370 --> 00:57:30,330
Um but still had control over the tumor.

1002
00:57:30,490 --> 00:57:30,570
Yeah.

1003
00:57:30,650 --> 00:57:30,890
That's right.

1004
00:57:31,130 --> 00:57:37,130
Like it's all about staying, but but that psychologically will have to change our our

1005
00:57:37,130 --> 00:57:38,970
way of how we think about cancer.

1006
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:45,080
Because right now there's like the war on cancer, like all of these metaphors about you got

1007
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:45,800
to get rid of everything.

1008
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:47,160
It's like a contamination.

1009
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:50,200
It's like it's like dirt and you've got to clean it out.

1010
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,160
It's like a very it's like a pathogen right.

1011
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:59,560
And it's and maybe it's this view that we are this this one uniform thing, right?

1012
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:01,400
Instead of this messy thing.

1013
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:06,760
And so once there is this idea that oh we can maybe treat cancer as

1014
00:58:07,190 --> 00:58:13,110
diabetes, where you know it's we're not going for cure, we're going for control of the

1015
00:58:13,110 --> 00:58:13,830
disease.

1016
00:58:14,070 --> 00:58:20,070
It's been um really hard to kind of get people wrapped around that

1017
00:58:20,070 --> 00:58:20,870
mentality.

1018
00:58:21,030 --> 00:58:26,550
But there are a few clinical trials out there working on exactly doing that.

1019
00:58:26,790 --> 00:58:32,470
Same drug that is already passed and given to patients, but just at lower doses,

1020
00:58:32,710 --> 00:58:36,150
um, and only responding when the tumor responds to it.

1021
00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:36,720
Yeah.

1022
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:37,520
It's so interesting.

1023
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,400
Metaphors of like science or physiology.

1024
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:41,120
It's really interesting.

1025
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,080
I never thought about like metaphors of like how to think about medicine.

1026
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:49,840
But yeah, that's going to totally affect the way you know physicians or the the

1027
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,000
applied folks are going to use things.

1028
00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:58,240
And one of the things sort of implicit in a lot of our science is we we change the

1029
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:02,960
metaphors we use as we learn more, but maybe that hasn't spread is sort of what I'm

1030
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:03,200
hearing.

1031
00:59:03,280 --> 00:59:03,520
Yeah.

1032
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:04,160
Yes.

1033
00:59:04,370 --> 00:59:04,930
Yes.

1034
00:59:05,170 --> 00:59:09,730
And and the thing is, unfortunate well, fortunately enough, many times there could be a

1035
00:59:09,730 --> 00:59:10,450
cure, right?

1036
00:59:10,610 --> 00:59:15,010
There's many people that I'm not saying this is everyone, like there's many people that get

1037
00:59:15,010 --> 00:59:18,930
cancer and do chemotherapy and it works.

1038
00:59:19,250 --> 00:59:24,930
And they're five like five years, 10 years, no, no sign of disease, right?

1039
00:59:25,090 --> 00:59:29,260
And so it's one figuring out who falls into what category.

1040
00:59:29,420 --> 00:59:30,780
When is it a cure case?

1041
00:59:30,860 --> 00:59:34,380
When is it a case where we're just going to do long-term treatment?

1042
00:59:34,780 --> 00:59:40,780
And then how do the whole treatment regime should be how do we avoid

1043
00:59:40,780 --> 00:59:41,660
resistance?

1044
00:59:42,940 --> 00:59:44,940
So super cool.

1045
00:59:45,100 --> 00:59:45,420
Yeah.

1046
00:59:45,580 --> 00:59:50,670
If it's it's sort of it's it's I love this, you know, replacing the metaphor of um

1047
00:59:50,990 --> 00:59:56,190
destruction and and conquest into like herding and domestication, like dealing with the

1048
00:59:56,190 --> 01:00:01,550
living organism and and trying to understand how it evolves on its own terms and and using

1049
01:00:01,550 --> 01:00:04,910
that um to control the disease.

1050
01:00:05,710 --> 01:00:10,440
Yeah, and I we have a lot of patient advocates that we work with, and some of them just are

1051
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:15,320
definitely very open to the the idea, especially when they've been living with the disease

1052
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:16,040
for so long.

1053
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:18,680
Is it it's like it's a part of me?

1054
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:20,440
Why don't I go ahead and name it?

1055
01:00:20,520 --> 01:00:26,360
And like we're we're we're like owning this this part of who we are becoming in this stage

1056
01:00:26,360 --> 01:00:27,720
of our lives, right?

1057
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:30,840
And so yeah, I think it can be really impactful.

1058
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:31,560
Yeah.

1059
01:00:31,800 --> 01:00:35,400
Um, in that those are great examples of evolutionary medicine.

1060
01:00:35,560 --> 01:00:41,530
Um, how uh how how far in, how much

1061
01:00:41,530 --> 01:00:43,770
has evolutionary medicine invaded medicine?

1062
01:00:44,010 --> 01:00:48,810
Um so I mean like you know, because a lot of people talk about even things we really know

1063
01:00:48,810 --> 01:00:54,810
about, like doctors don't do, you know, like like like the basic research and that

1064
01:00:54,810 --> 01:01:00,170
getting translated to what doctors do, especially in the US, where there's lots of sort of

1065
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:05,280
uh decisions made on sort of not getting sued as opposed to what's medically or

1066
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:06,560
scientifically best.

1067
01:01:06,880 --> 01:01:12,720
Um do you have a sense of either just, you know, uh from the

1068
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:18,720
historical perspective of like, is evolutionary medicine being incorporated into day

1069
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:24,480
to day medicine, or is that still really a a tragedy and that things could be better?

1070
01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:25,840
Yeah.

1071
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,600
I think I I don't think we're there yet.

1072
01:01:29,990 --> 01:01:35,670
Like when I was in grad school, it was really hard to, you know, I was the evolutionary

1073
01:01:35,670 --> 01:01:40,950
person in a a sea of, you know, people that weren't interested in the evolutionary

1074
01:01:40,950 --> 01:01:41,750
perspective.

1075
01:01:41,990 --> 01:01:47,670
And, you know, we spent most of our time explaining why evolution was useful in

1076
01:01:47,670 --> 01:01:49,030
human health, right?

1077
01:01:49,820 --> 01:01:55,180
And I I I still see that potentially the case today, with few excepts

1078
01:01:55,340 --> 01:02:01,180
exceptions, you know, um, in terms of antibiotic resistance or something, we know that the

1079
01:02:01,180 --> 01:02:02,860
bacteria are evolving.

1080
01:02:02,940 --> 01:02:08,700
And so there is some uptake of trying to understand evolutionary principles

1081
01:02:08,700 --> 01:02:09,260
for that.

1082
01:02:09,500 --> 01:02:13,980
But I think in general, it's still a completely different track.

1083
01:02:14,140 --> 01:02:17,750
It is not taught in med schools or rarely taught in med schools.

1084
01:02:17,910 --> 01:02:23,110
There's been a big push for evolutionary medicine to be more incorporated into

1085
01:02:23,350 --> 01:02:29,190
medical school um um course structures and stuff like that but and

1086
01:02:29,190 --> 01:02:33,670
then at the end of the day I've talked to a lot of physicians and this might be true like

1087
01:02:33,830 --> 01:02:38,950
they have so much on their plate that they don't care if you were inspired by evolution.

1088
01:02:39,190 --> 01:02:39,350
Right.

1089
01:02:39,510 --> 01:02:41,110
They still just want to know what's happening.

1090
01:02:44,140 --> 01:02:45,100
And so that's the thing.

1091
01:02:45,180 --> 01:02:50,380
Like, we're working on something that potentially a species in nature, like elephants are

1092
01:02:50,380 --> 01:02:51,740
really good at not getting cancer.

1093
01:02:51,900 --> 01:02:57,500
If we use that mechanism and then suddenly it works to treat human cancers, how

1094
01:02:57,500 --> 01:03:01,820
many people care that you know we were inspired by evolution?

1095
01:03:01,980 --> 01:03:07,260
Some people might, but like the the general public's like, can it treat the disease I am

1096
01:03:07,260 --> 01:03:08,540
seeing patients die of?

1097
01:03:08,780 --> 01:03:09,020
Right.

1098
01:03:09,180 --> 01:03:09,420
Right?

1099
01:03:09,580 --> 01:03:09,740
Yeah.

1100
01:03:10,060 --> 01:03:15,990
And so I think, yeah, there there's there's room for evolution in

1101
01:03:15,990 --> 01:03:20,630
the medical curriculum, but also there's there's room for maybe us to do it and then

1102
01:03:20,630 --> 01:03:25,350
provide the more practical bench side approaches that they get.

1103
01:03:25,830 --> 01:03:30,390
But I mean, still even in basic research, I mean, uh my understanding is in medicine,

1104
01:03:30,470 --> 01:03:34,630
there's still like, you know, you don't know if something's gonna become a solution to a

1105
01:03:34,630 --> 01:03:34,870
problem.

1106
01:03:35,030 --> 01:03:36,150
You just don't know, right?

1107
01:03:36,310 --> 01:03:42,120
So you have to invest in um, you know, things that and there's all kinds of

1108
01:03:42,120 --> 01:03:47,000
examples of, you know, somebody was studying some like slime mold or um, you know, like a

1109
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:51,480
sea cucumber, and it led to like this transformative discovery.

1110
01:03:51,720 --> 01:03:57,400
Um is there enough of that kind of investment in

1111
01:03:57,640 --> 01:03:59,480
in from an evolutionary perspective?

1112
01:03:59,640 --> 01:04:02,920
Because I mean, I I I assume, or maybe it's wrong.

1113
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:03,560
Like, I don't know.

1114
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:07,160
Um maybe I'll maybe you're gonna tell me something that is terrifying that there's very

1115
01:04:07,160 --> 01:04:12,950
little investment in basic risky research that might have a payout.

1116
01:04:13,110 --> 01:04:13,750
I don't know.

1117
01:04:13,910 --> 01:04:14,550
Yeah.

1118
01:04:17,270 --> 01:04:17,990
Easy question.

1119
01:04:18,310 --> 01:04:20,150
Talk to talk to the grant funders.

1120
01:04:20,230 --> 01:04:22,230
Um NIH, not so much.

1121
01:04:22,630 --> 01:04:27,350
We've tried, we've been funded by the NIH to study like cancer and animals with the like

1122
01:04:27,510 --> 01:04:31,980
eye towards how do we make it, you know, into humans?

1123
01:04:32,060 --> 01:04:36,780
You know, like how do we translate what we learn from cancer across the tree of life into

1124
01:04:36,940 --> 01:04:37,340
humans?

1125
01:04:37,500 --> 01:04:42,940
It's been hard, it's been considered risky, it's been like really uh difficult

1126
01:04:43,260 --> 01:04:45,500
to provide this.

1127
01:04:45,660 --> 01:04:48,860
But same thing, we don't know what we're gonna learn in basic biology.

1128
01:04:49,020 --> 01:04:54,620
So GLP1, which is the drug everyone is obsessed with suddenly, and it's really great for

1129
01:04:54,620 --> 01:05:00,410
treating individuals with diabetes, was discovered in basic biology

1130
01:05:00,570 --> 01:05:02,170
studying the Gila monster.

1131
01:05:02,410 --> 01:05:02,890
Wow.

1132
01:05:03,130 --> 01:05:08,570
It was one single amino acid change that made it, you know, a

1133
01:05:08,570 --> 01:05:13,530
difference between the human version and that that has made a difference in human biology.

1134
01:05:13,690 --> 01:05:19,210
They were not trying to study the Gila monster to treat human and weight loss in

1135
01:05:19,210 --> 01:05:20,250
diabetes, right?

1136
01:05:20,330 --> 01:05:23,210
It was just a basic biology discovery.

1137
01:05:23,370 --> 01:05:28,760
And so I, yes, I think it's it's a shame that we don't have more funding

1138
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:34,680
sources towards basic biology research where it's it's not so driven where you

1139
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:37,640
have these deliverables at the at the end of the day.

1140
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:43,560
The NSF is obviously more keen to um to

1141
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:49,470
uh fund stuff that is on that level of basic biology and just

1142
01:05:49,470 --> 01:05:51,950
understanding a species biology.

1143
01:05:52,670 --> 01:05:56,030
But when we try and write grants for there, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're working

1144
01:05:56,030 --> 01:05:57,630
on a human disease.

1145
01:05:57,870 --> 01:05:59,550
Like go to the NIH.

1146
01:05:59,630 --> 01:06:05,310
And so unfortunately, there is like this evolutionary medicine falls into this, like

1147
01:06:05,790 --> 01:06:11,550
really in-between that ends up being left behind in many of these

1148
01:06:12,120 --> 01:06:17,960
uh programs because we were interested in evolutionary percept perspectives on

1149
01:06:17,960 --> 01:06:19,240
disease in humans.

1150
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:20,920
And there's like, yeah.

1151
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:22,040
That's crazy.

1152
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:27,880
I mean it really sounds like the funding presupposes what the solution, the best way to get

1153
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:29,000
to the solution.

1154
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:35,530
And I imagine if you looked the probably evolutionary medicine has a much more

1155
01:06:35,530 --> 01:06:38,890
efficient track record than though these assumptions.

1156
01:06:38,970 --> 01:06:44,810
I would affect I mean we argue why are we evolution has provided a roadmap for us to

1157
01:06:44,810 --> 01:06:45,610
understand cancer.

1158
01:06:45,770 --> 01:06:48,730
There are some species that do not get much cancer at all.

1159
01:06:48,890 --> 01:06:51,050
We could almost consider them resistant.

1160
01:06:51,290 --> 01:06:54,490
Why are we not studying these more and providing so many funds?

1161
01:06:54,650 --> 01:06:57,210
They're they're mammals potentially like us.

1162
01:06:57,450 --> 01:07:01,610
It's already proven for millions and millions of years for this species.

1163
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:05,680
how can we not translate that better into human biology?

1164
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:10,400
So Yeah, no, natural selection is just an incredible, much much better than any

1165
01:07:10,400 --> 01:07:14,560
pharmaceutical company at creating uh substances.

1166
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:18,000
It's had much longer, uh, much much more RD.

1167
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:20,800
Much more RD, more RD than you'll ever have time for.

1168
01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:21,040
Yeah.

1169
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:22,240
So it's crazy.

1170
01:07:22,320 --> 01:07:28,240
Umthough, I mean, I'm in the academic world, there are tons of startups that are

1171
01:07:28,240 --> 01:07:28,960
looking at this.

1172
01:07:29,170 --> 01:07:35,170
They're like bio-inspired medicine that are that are turning to look at species

1173
01:07:35,170 --> 01:07:40,770
for various things, not just cancer, but tons of different um health

1174
01:07:40,930 --> 01:07:42,530
issues in in humans.

1175
01:07:42,690 --> 01:07:43,170
So yeah.

1176
01:07:44,130 --> 01:07:46,210
Have you uh uh David, were you gonna say something?

1177
01:07:46,530 --> 01:07:51,580
No, I was just gonna say, like, you know, obviously we're seeing similar resistance to

1178
01:07:51,580 --> 01:07:57,100
evolutionary perspectives in the social sciences as well, uh in um psychiatry and and

1179
01:07:57,100 --> 01:07:58,300
mental health as well.

1180
01:07:58,460 --> 01:08:01,340
Um there's just the uptake is very slow.

1181
01:08:01,500 --> 01:08:05,660
Um and you know, it's obviously a big part of the reason why Dave and I have started this

1182
01:08:05,660 --> 01:08:08,700
podcast is to try to push things along in that direction.

1183
01:08:08,860 --> 01:08:10,630
Um we're about halfway there.

1184
01:08:10,710 --> 01:08:12,790
We've made a huge dent we oh yeah.

1185
01:08:12,870 --> 01:08:16,070
I mean we next next year everyone's fundamentally changed.

1186
01:08:17,670 --> 01:08:19,910
Hey you guys have a good trajectory.

1187
01:08:20,070 --> 01:08:21,350
You're getting followers.

1188
01:08:21,510 --> 01:08:21,990
It's great.

1189
01:08:22,230 --> 01:08:22,470
Yes.

1190
01:08:22,710 --> 01:08:23,430
Yes, but yes.

1191
01:08:23,510 --> 01:08:27,030
No, we're gonna the United States will be fine with evolution by like next spring, you

1192
01:08:27,030 --> 01:08:27,110
know.

1193
01:08:27,190 --> 01:08:27,830
Yeah, we'll be fine.

1194
01:08:29,640 --> 01:08:30,280
Sorry, David.

1195
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:30,600
Go ahead.

1196
01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:33,640
Anyway, yeah, I'm just because of interjections like that.

1197
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:39,000
That's why Yeah, we can't even get our names right in the introduction.

1198
01:08:39,320 --> 01:08:42,520
We think we're gonna change the face of American science.

1199
01:08:42,600 --> 01:08:42,840
No.

1200
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:47,240
Um uh so yeah, I just uh I wanna know why.

1201
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:49,320
Like why w what is the resistance?

1202
01:08:49,480 --> 01:08:53,470
I mean, I get your point that with medicine there's a certain urgency.

1203
01:08:53,630 --> 01:08:59,550
And there's a certain callousness to daydreaming about evolution when people are

1204
01:08:59,550 --> 01:09:00,350
dying, right?

1205
01:09:00,430 --> 01:09:03,390
Like there you need to get a practical solution right now.

1206
01:09:03,470 --> 01:09:07,710
And we don't have time for you to think about evolutionary theory and cancer and elephants

1207
01:09:07,790 --> 01:09:08,990
and microchimerism.

1208
01:09:09,230 --> 01:09:12,190
Like people are dying, focus on what's happening right now.

1209
01:09:12,430 --> 01:09:15,150
And like I get that perspective on an intuitive level.

1210
01:09:15,230 --> 01:09:16,590
Like I understand it.

1211
01:09:16,740 --> 01:09:21,540
Um there's a bit less of that excuse when it comes to social science and and mental health,

1212
01:09:21,700 --> 01:09:22,260
I think.

1213
01:09:22,500 --> 01:09:25,860
Um really with there, there's really no exc like excuse there.

1214
01:09:26,020 --> 01:09:30,180
Like the whole point is to understand the human condition, the human mind, uh how hum

1215
01:09:30,420 --> 01:09:35,060
humans are embedded in their social structures and how they, you know, can achieve you know

1216
01:09:35,220 --> 01:09:36,660
well-being in their lives.

1217
01:09:36,820 --> 01:09:42,610
Like I it seems like evolution should be moving at a faster pace as a

1218
01:09:42,610 --> 01:09:44,690
meta theory for encompassing that stuff.

1219
01:09:44,850 --> 01:09:45,970
Um so yeah, I don't know.

1220
01:09:46,050 --> 01:09:50,130
Uh do you have uh an intuition about why the uptake is so slow?

1221
01:09:52,370 --> 01:09:58,370
I think one, there isn't good, and we know this in this country, um, an evolutionary

1222
01:09:58,370 --> 01:10:02,770
perspective in general in in in our education.

1223
01:10:03,780 --> 01:10:04,100
Right.

1224
01:10:04,340 --> 01:10:09,060
Like, I don't like if you go and I the difference is shocking.

1225
01:10:09,220 --> 01:10:15,220
If I have colleagues working in the UK, and they I feel like

1226
01:10:15,220 --> 01:10:20,500
culturally they have a more naturalistic upbringing in their education, where they

1227
01:10:20,820 --> 01:10:26,710
everyone, even if you're not teaching evolution, is it's kind of embedded

1228
01:10:26,710 --> 01:10:27,670
a bit more.

1229
01:10:27,910 --> 01:10:32,870
And I think there is just such a a divide in the US about even

1230
01:10:33,350 --> 01:10:36,230
talking about evolution and and bringing it in.

1231
01:10:36,310 --> 01:10:38,550
And like it's it's it's huge.

1232
01:10:38,710 --> 01:10:40,070
But I see these differences.

1233
01:10:40,230 --> 01:10:45,830
Like when I talk to, you know, individuals in the UK about like, oh,

1234
01:10:45,990 --> 01:10:49,670
species evolution at the zoo and like all like it's just, yeah, it's the same.

1235
01:10:49,750 --> 01:10:52,460
And then you come here and like it's it's a mess.

1236
01:10:52,540 --> 01:10:56,620
Like no no one agrees or says you can't say that or you can't do this.

1237
01:10:56,700 --> 01:10:58,300
And so I I don't know.

1238
01:10:58,380 --> 01:11:04,300
I wonder if some of it is um how we educate

1239
01:11:04,300 --> 01:11:09,420
our children and how that is culturally different from the US and other

1240
01:11:09,420 --> 01:11:11,020
countries as well.

1241
01:11:11,580 --> 01:11:17,290
Um I yeah, I I don't know why it's such a struggle to

1242
01:11:17,290 --> 01:11:22,650
get evolution in more mainstream thinking.

1243
01:11:23,370 --> 01:11:28,890
I mean, I guess the other thing is there's obviously people who have done things that made

1244
01:11:28,890 --> 01:11:33,610
it harder for us by by misusing it, right?

1245
01:11:34,020 --> 01:11:38,820
By misusing how evolution works in in in various ways.

1246
01:11:38,980 --> 01:11:44,660
We see this, you know, today with um people on platforms saying that like,

1247
01:11:44,820 --> 01:11:49,700
oh, this is how you should eat or this is how you should think, because evolutionarily

1248
01:11:49,780 --> 01:11:54,980
that's what we're like made to do, you know, and that's not evolutionary medicine either.

1249
01:11:55,700 --> 01:11:57,780
Eat a pound of bacon, eat a pound of bacon, yeah.

1250
01:11:57,940 --> 01:12:00,820
Yeah, like and so that's problematic.

1251
01:12:01,150 --> 01:12:07,150
You have these these misguided efforts that use evolution

1252
01:12:07,150 --> 01:12:10,430
as an excuse for terrible things.

1253
01:12:10,670 --> 01:12:11,710
So yeah.

1254
01:12:11,870 --> 01:12:13,390
No, it's I mean, that's totally true.

1255
01:12:13,470 --> 01:12:17,550
I mean, but you also see that in like general, there's like pseudoscience in general.

1256
01:12:17,950 --> 01:12:21,870
There's perversions of of mainstream science, but it doesn't tarnish our image of science

1257
01:12:21,870 --> 01:12:24,960
itself when a few crackpots have some stupid ideas.

1258
01:12:25,120 --> 01:12:29,360
But when a few crackpots and the evolutionary sciences have some stupid ideas, then it it

1259
01:12:29,360 --> 01:12:33,120
somehow tarnishes the entire evolutionary perspective in a way that it doesn't for other

1260
01:12:33,120 --> 01:12:33,520
sciences.

1261
01:12:33,600 --> 01:12:34,000
I don't know.

1262
01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:35,600
I really don't know why that is.

1263
01:12:43,310 --> 01:12:47,310
I mean like people it does tarnish science a little bit like going back to Jurassic Park I

1264
01:12:47,310 --> 01:12:52,670
mean there's like there there's been like 33 decades of like anti-science propaganda movies

1265
01:12:52,750 --> 01:12:58,030
I mean or like you know or like reasonably enough like for people or like you know the the

1266
01:12:58,030 --> 01:13:02,430
Jurassic Park quote of like you were spending so much time thinking about if you should you

1267
01:13:02,430 --> 01:13:06,880
didn't think about or if you could I totally butchered that I think I should edit that out.

1268
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:12,240
Yeah, the the the Ian Malcolm line of like you spent so much time thinking if you could,

1269
01:13:12,400 --> 01:13:14,080
you didn't spend any time thinking if you should, right?

1270
01:13:14,240 --> 01:13:19,520
Like that's that's a yes, you know, especially in like a very like we people have been the

1271
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:25,520
victims of all kinds of right research, uh especially in the US, um

1272
01:13:25,680 --> 01:13:26,960
in the 20th century.

1273
01:13:27,040 --> 01:13:29,520
Like that's pretty historically documented, yeah.

1274
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:33,950
And I just think it's so hard to get misinformation away once it's tarnished.

1275
01:13:34,030 --> 01:13:38,350
I guess the other one, like once it hits mainstream, and I think evolutionary psychology

1276
01:13:38,590 --> 01:13:43,150
and all that is sexy enough where it hits mainstream, and then you you really can't.

1277
01:13:43,310 --> 01:13:49,070
And another relevant one that also hit mainstream that is completely not true is like

1278
01:13:49,230 --> 01:13:51,150
the vaccines cause autism.

1279
01:13:51,390 --> 01:13:51,550
Yeah.

1280
01:13:51,710 --> 01:13:56,860
That researcher and Andrew Wakefield lost his license and was like, Yeah, I made that all

1281
01:13:56,860 --> 01:13:57,020
up.

1282
01:13:57,180 --> 01:14:00,300
And people like, yeah, you can read all about it.

1283
01:14:00,460 --> 01:14:05,500
There's books, there's all this information to prove that that is not true.

1284
01:14:06,300 --> 01:14:09,020
Yet here we are, and that's tarnished the field.

1285
01:14:09,100 --> 01:14:15,020
There's such hesitant, hesit hesitancy in in vaccine research,

1286
01:14:15,340 --> 01:14:17,500
vaccine dis distribution.

1287
01:14:17,740 --> 01:14:18,780
Um, yeah.

1288
01:14:18,940 --> 01:14:19,340
Yeah.

1289
01:14:19,580 --> 01:14:22,140
I think there's these these sticky topics.

1290
01:14:22,380 --> 01:14:22,620
Yeah.

1291
01:14:22,700 --> 01:14:23,260
Yeah.

1292
01:14:23,710 --> 01:14:25,070
Although I yeah.

1293
01:14:25,230 --> 01:14:30,190
And I guess that's like a for for another episode where we talk about conspiracies and um

1294
01:14:30,910 --> 01:14:33,390
redirection of the people who are out to get you.

1295
01:14:33,630 --> 01:14:39,310
Often the people who are exploiting people are incentivized to have another set of people

1296
01:14:39,630 --> 01:14:42,430
being the scapegoats of who's exploiting the people.

1297
01:14:42,510 --> 01:14:42,750
Yeah.

1298
01:14:42,990 --> 01:14:43,310
Yeah.

1299
01:14:43,550 --> 01:14:48,600
And it might it might very well be fields most vulnerable where you get this confirmation

1300
01:14:48,600 --> 01:14:49,240
bias.

1301
01:14:49,800 --> 01:14:50,120
Right.

1302
01:14:50,280 --> 01:14:54,840
Like we're really bad at that, where it's like, oh yeah, I knew, yep.

1303
01:14:55,080 --> 01:14:58,680
I knew a a child that got a vaccine and like, yep.

1304
01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:00,040
So yes, that's true.

1305
01:15:00,120 --> 01:15:05,400
And maybe very similar for things in evolutionary psychology where people are like, Yeah, I

1306
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:07,880
know like that that that makes sense to me.

1307
01:15:07,960 --> 01:15:13,930
And like there other things maybe are not so vulnerable to these confirmation biases

1308
01:15:14,010 --> 01:15:19,290
and so then don't have such a controversy around them, right?

1309
01:15:19,450 --> 01:15:21,930
Where you can't get rid of that misinformation.

1310
01:15:22,250 --> 01:15:23,690
Yeah, that's really interesting.

1311
01:15:23,850 --> 01:15:26,250
Uh Amy, you're it's just a slightly changed topic.

1312
01:15:26,410 --> 01:15:30,170
You you're in an anthropology department, but you kind of talked at the beginning about

1313
01:15:30,170 --> 01:15:35,130
sort of feeling like you're not you're not in any one or you sort of have a um yeah.

1314
01:15:35,290 --> 01:15:39,340
Um how did you so what is that like?

1315
01:15:39,420 --> 01:15:43,900
And do you do you do like collaborations with people in the field?

1316
01:15:44,060 --> 01:15:48,620
Or um and then also uh another question, I don't know, I'm asking you two different

1317
01:15:48,620 --> 01:15:49,580
questions all the time.

1318
01:15:49,660 --> 01:15:53,580
But uh the other question is you mentioned you were originally like in medical school.

1319
01:15:53,740 --> 01:15:55,820
Did you know you wanted to do evolution?

1320
01:15:55,980 --> 01:16:01,910
Like, how did you get um like I maybe it's the same question, which is sort

1321
01:16:01,910 --> 01:16:05,190
of like how did you get to where you are and where are you now?

1322
01:16:05,430 --> 01:16:09,430
And are you do you still feel like you don't quite fit anywhere?

1323
01:16:09,670 --> 01:16:13,990
Um is that next question.

1324
01:16:14,070 --> 01:16:14,310
Yeah.

1325
01:16:14,630 --> 01:16:14,790
Yeah.

1326
01:16:15,590 --> 01:16:16,150
Ah no.

1327
01:16:16,390 --> 01:16:20,550
No, I um I had no idea what I was doing in undergrad.

1328
01:16:20,950 --> 01:16:26,840
Like I went to a community college, was like, I like biology, went on to

1329
01:16:26,920 --> 01:16:32,920
like you know, um, a university, um, still didn't know what I wanted to do.

1330
01:16:33,000 --> 01:16:37,400
So I was like, I should apply to grad school because then I can be a forever student and

1331
01:16:37,400 --> 01:16:41,240
not have to deal with uh adult life stuff.

1332
01:16:41,480 --> 01:16:47,320
And so I I did know that I wanted to work with humans and humans somehow.

1333
01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:53,250
Um, And actually, when I was in undergrad, I was struggling between biology and then

1334
01:16:53,250 --> 01:16:54,770
anthropology, right?

1335
01:16:55,010 --> 01:17:01,010
Because all of my biology classes were like biology of plants and, you know, like

1336
01:17:01,010 --> 01:17:06,450
things that just didn't excite me in the same way human biology excited me.

1337
01:17:06,930 --> 01:17:11,090
And then when you want to study human biology, a lot of times you have to be in a med

1338
01:17:11,090 --> 01:17:11,730
school to study.

1339
01:17:12,610 --> 01:17:15,890
We really do separate our fields a little weird.

1340
01:17:15,970 --> 01:17:20,540
So we're using the same principles when we study ecology and all of this stuff, but like

1341
01:17:20,540 --> 01:17:23,740
humans, we put them in a different room, a different school.

1342
01:17:23,900 --> 01:17:25,580
It's a silo effect.

1343
01:17:25,740 --> 01:17:30,140
Um and so just on luck, I applied um to get my PhD.

1344
01:17:30,220 --> 01:17:35,660
It was still locally, there was no necessarily rhyme or reason to why I went to the school

1345
01:17:35,660 --> 01:17:38,780
I went to other than I had to stay in the Detroit area.

1346
01:17:39,660 --> 01:17:45,450
And so but there I I my mind became more open to evolutionary

1347
01:17:45,450 --> 01:17:45,850
biology.

1348
01:17:45,930 --> 01:17:47,290
I'd already taken classes.

1349
01:17:47,450 --> 01:17:52,170
There was a there was a faculty member there kind of looking at evolutionary principles to

1350
01:17:52,170 --> 01:17:52,890
cancer already.

1351
01:17:53,050 --> 01:17:55,930
There was another one looking at evolutionary the placenta.

1352
01:17:56,090 --> 01:18:02,010
Like all of this was kind of feeding through my graduate experience in terms

1353
01:18:02,010 --> 01:18:07,450
of, and then of course, uh Randy Nessie at the time, who was one of the big drivers of the

1354
01:18:07,450 --> 01:18:09,050
field of evolutionary medicine.

1355
01:18:09,290 --> 01:18:10,570
So I was in Detroit.

1356
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:13,040
Um, he was in um Ann Arbor.

1357
01:18:13,360 --> 01:18:16,560
So that was just an hour away from where we were.

1358
01:18:16,720 --> 01:18:21,520
And so we as grad students would all drive up when he had evolutionary medicine seminars

1359
01:18:21,520 --> 01:18:22,800
and watch them.

1360
01:18:22,960 --> 01:18:28,800
And so, and that's where we were all like, whoa, this putting it together is just so

1361
01:18:28,800 --> 01:18:29,360
cool.

1362
01:18:29,520 --> 01:18:34,560
And so, yeah, from there I went to do a postdoc and we ended up at like the Department of

1363
01:18:34,560 --> 01:18:40,550
Surgery, but it was at such a very specific Posting about studying life

1364
01:18:40,550 --> 01:18:43,510
history theory in cancer biology.

1365
01:18:43,750 --> 01:18:49,110
And I just thought I I I wanted that opportunity and I was able to get it.

1366
01:18:49,190 --> 01:18:52,310
And yeah, so it's kind of where I went.

1367
01:18:52,470 --> 01:18:57,030
And so yeah, I there was in the Department of Surgery, and then we went at Arizona State

1368
01:18:57,030 --> 01:18:57,670
University.

1369
01:18:57,990 --> 01:19:03,340
Um, we were kind of split between various departments, and there was a center for

1370
01:19:03,340 --> 01:19:04,620
evolutionary medicine there.

1371
01:19:04,780 --> 01:19:07,420
So, but yeah, I think anthropology does all that.

1372
01:19:07,580 --> 01:19:12,620
That's why it's accepting of evolutionary medicine, is that anthropology is already this

1373
01:19:12,620 --> 01:19:17,500
very broad field that has to take many different perspectives and kind of mush it all

1374
01:19:17,500 --> 01:19:19,020
together to understand humans.

1375
01:19:19,100 --> 01:19:23,340
We're we're understanding social circles, we're understanding culture, we look at the

1376
01:19:23,340 --> 01:19:27,950
biology, we look at evolutionary history, we're kind of adding all that in.

1377
01:19:28,270 --> 01:19:29,630
And so yeah.

1378
01:19:30,030 --> 01:19:30,750
Yeah, that's cool.

1379
01:19:30,830 --> 01:19:36,670
And do you feel like um is the UCSB anthro department um uh

1380
01:19:36,910 --> 01:19:42,910
in terms of the biology, hum the human biology, is that sort of a strength in

1381
01:19:42,910 --> 01:19:43,630
that department?

1382
01:19:43,790 --> 01:19:45,470
Or yeah, I think so.

1383
01:19:45,550 --> 01:19:49,320
I there's there's many times where the the students are like, this is biology.

1384
01:19:49,480 --> 01:19:50,600
And I'm like, yes.

1385
01:19:52,520 --> 01:19:56,520
I hate that when it's like when you say you're a biological anthropologist, they think

1386
01:19:56,520 --> 01:20:01,480
you're less of both somehow, you know, like, you know, like the oh, you combined them,

1387
01:20:01,560 --> 01:20:05,720
you're a hybrid, you're like one of those bikes that can't go like fast on the road, but

1388
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:11,560
also is bad at climbing a mountain, you know, like but no, it's like a lot of us are

1389
01:20:11,930 --> 01:20:13,050
human biologists.

1390
01:20:13,130 --> 01:20:14,090
We are biologists.

1391
01:20:14,250 --> 01:20:15,370
We have wet labs.

1392
01:20:15,450 --> 01:20:19,370
We have like NIH funding, but also we're studying humans.

1393
01:20:19,450 --> 01:20:21,450
So we're in the anthropology department.

1394
01:20:21,530 --> 01:20:24,650
And actually, a lot of the biology is conserved.

1395
01:20:24,890 --> 01:20:29,770
So when I'm teaching genetics, yes, you're learning fruit fly genetics that will eventually

1396
01:20:29,770 --> 01:20:31,770
get to human genetics, but yeah.

1397
01:20:32,010 --> 01:20:36,490
A lot of the the the stuff is conserved biology across systems.

1398
01:20:36,730 --> 01:20:36,970
Yeah.

1399
01:20:37,300 --> 01:20:41,940
We we had a recent episode where we haven't released it yet at the time of our recording

1400
01:20:41,940 --> 01:20:43,380
right now about the microbiome.

1401
01:20:43,780 --> 01:20:48,580
And that was a case where people's microbiomes, if you look at sort of um more

1402
01:20:48,740 --> 01:20:54,420
evolutionarily um EA-ish um people, you know, hunter

1403
01:20:54,420 --> 01:20:58,820
horticulturist, hunter gatherers, their microbiomes look very different than like a Western

1404
01:20:59,700 --> 01:21:05,430
modern um is what you study a case where there's less of a sort of

1405
01:21:05,430 --> 01:21:08,950
mismatchy thing, or do you think there still might be mismatchy stuff?

1406
01:21:09,030 --> 01:21:14,790
Like, I mean, obviously breastfeeding, um, the the the an absence of breastfeeding

1407
01:21:15,030 --> 01:21:20,950
or um or like a reduced amount of maternal per leave or um or

1408
01:21:20,950 --> 01:21:23,510
maybe c sections that are planned.

1409
01:21:23,670 --> 01:21:24,220
I don't know.

1410
01:21:24,300 --> 01:21:28,700
Like, is that something you've thought about, or is there potential mismatch-y kind of

1411
01:21:28,700 --> 01:21:28,860
things?

1412
01:21:28,940 --> 01:21:33,820
Or are we doing things to violate the good assumptions of these systems that we might not

1413
01:21:33,820 --> 01:21:38,060
know and inadvertently maybe making our ourselves less healthy, for example?

1414
01:21:38,460 --> 01:21:39,100
Yeah.

1415
01:21:39,500 --> 01:21:39,980
Yeah.

1416
01:21:41,420 --> 01:21:46,140
I yes, mismatch is very much a part of what we're studying.

1417
01:21:46,300 --> 01:21:50,990
Um in the cancer point of view, I think of mismatch of a long history.

1418
01:21:51,150 --> 01:21:53,150
So we're looking at cancer and chimpanzees.

1419
01:21:53,310 --> 01:21:56,510
What do they get compared to what humans get, right?

1420
01:21:56,670 --> 01:22:00,510
So it's a broader mismatch in terms of that a little bit.

1421
01:22:01,150 --> 01:22:05,950
And it's interesting, we're seeing very different patterns of cancer in our closest living

1422
01:22:05,950 --> 01:22:06,590
relatives.

1423
01:22:06,830 --> 01:22:08,670
So, like what's going on there?

1424
01:22:08,830 --> 01:22:11,550
And then, yeah, with with the pregnancy stuff, same thing.

1425
01:22:11,710 --> 01:22:14,350
Yeah, like mismatch in terms of C-sections.

1426
01:22:14,430 --> 01:22:17,700
We see maybe more spillover of fetal cells.

1427
01:22:18,820 --> 01:22:21,780
So there's there's some there's some consequences.

1428
01:22:21,940 --> 01:22:27,940
Also, yeah, breastfeeding in in general, thinking about it from a a mismatch point of

1429
01:22:27,940 --> 01:22:33,940
view in terms of how much you're doing, but also thinking about breastfeeding

1430
01:22:33,940 --> 01:22:39,790
from a maternal fetal conflict kind of view, it's it's interesting because we always

1431
01:22:39,950 --> 01:22:44,830
we always say like you know breastfeeding is the best, you know, and the longest is best

1432
01:22:44,830 --> 01:22:47,150
for the infant, infant, infant focused.

1433
01:22:47,390 --> 01:22:48,670
What's best for the mother?

1434
01:22:48,910 --> 01:22:54,350
How long should the mother breastfeed for her own best

1435
01:22:54,590 --> 01:22:55,870
health and interest?

1436
01:22:56,030 --> 01:22:59,980
And that is that's missing in our narrative completely.

1437
01:23:00,300 --> 01:23:06,220
Um and there could be a trade-off at some point where the breastfeeding is still

1438
01:23:06,220 --> 01:23:11,020
great for the infant, but actually it's not good for the mom anymore because it is a

1439
01:23:11,020 --> 01:23:12,060
biological process.

1440
01:23:12,220 --> 01:23:14,380
It has a demand on the maternal body.

1441
01:23:14,540 --> 01:23:15,660
It's inflammatory.

1442
01:23:15,740 --> 01:23:17,580
It's got all these other things going on.

1443
01:23:17,740 --> 01:23:18,620
So yeah.

1444
01:23:18,940 --> 01:23:19,420
Yeah.

1445
01:23:19,740 --> 01:23:20,300
Cool.

1446
01:23:20,590 --> 01:23:25,630
Yeah, that's one of the great um insights of the evolutionary perspective, which is it

1447
01:23:25,630 --> 01:23:26,990
focuses you on trade-offs.

1448
01:23:27,070 --> 01:23:31,870
So even if something is good for the infant, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be

1449
01:23:31,870 --> 01:23:32,830
good for mom.

1450
01:23:33,070 --> 01:23:34,190
Uh you know.

1451
01:23:34,430 --> 01:23:37,390
So I I I think that's a really important insight.

1452
01:23:37,710 --> 01:23:42,420
Um I'm curious, I when I was looking over your uh your research, I saw something called

1453
01:23:42,420 --> 01:23:44,420
Pito or Pedo's paradox.

1454
01:23:44,980 --> 01:23:46,100
I don't know how it's pronounced.

1455
01:23:46,180 --> 01:23:47,780
Uh I'm cu I I don't know what that is.

1456
01:23:47,860 --> 01:23:49,060
I'd like to learn about what it is.

1457
01:23:49,140 --> 01:23:50,820
I like a good paradox.

1458
01:23:51,140 --> 01:23:51,380
Yes.

1459
01:23:51,460 --> 01:23:57,300
Um The thing about paradoxes

1460
01:23:57,300 --> 01:23:58,580
is they're very no.

1461
01:23:58,820 --> 01:24:03,140
Um yeah, it's it's Pedo's paradox and this is great.

1462
01:24:03,300 --> 01:24:06,470
Um this is was proposed in the 70s.

1463
01:24:06,550 --> 01:24:08,950
It was an epidemiologist, Richard Pito.

1464
01:24:09,430 --> 01:24:11,110
Um, he was studying cancer evolution.

1465
01:24:11,590 --> 01:24:17,590
Cancer um is such an interesting case study for you know

1466
01:24:18,230 --> 01:24:21,830
how technology really shifted the field.

1467
01:24:22,070 --> 01:24:26,150
Because I think in the 70s we knew cancer evolved, right?

1468
01:24:26,310 --> 01:24:31,520
And cancer cells evolved, and there's these evolutionary principles of cancer.

1469
01:24:31,680 --> 01:24:35,920
And then within the 80s and 90s, we're all just decided that we're going to sequence

1470
01:24:35,920 --> 01:24:38,880
everything and try and find the cancer gene and the genetics.

1471
01:24:38,960 --> 01:24:42,160
And then we got really too detailed, right?

1472
01:24:42,320 --> 01:24:47,760
Instead of looking at this big holistic picture and trying to fundamentally understand that

1473
01:24:47,760 --> 01:24:51,360
each cancer is different and it's a whole bunch of different mutation signatures.

1474
01:24:51,440 --> 01:24:53,360
And it's like this emergent property.

1475
01:24:53,440 --> 01:24:58,510
We went very molecular, and now we're kind of spit out on the other end where we're back to

1476
01:24:58,510 --> 01:25:02,990
this, like, oh, we went that route and actually we got to go more holistic.

1477
01:25:03,150 --> 01:25:05,230
But in the 70s, it was so amazing.

1478
01:25:05,390 --> 01:25:11,150
Richard Pito observed that elephants have a hundred more cells in humans.

1479
01:25:11,390 --> 01:25:17,310
If cancer is a disease of cell division and cell mutation,

1480
01:25:17,630 --> 01:25:20,990
shouldn't species that have more cells have more cancer?

1481
01:25:21,520 --> 01:25:25,920
But what I'm seeing is humans have a lot more cancer than elephants.

1482
01:25:26,080 --> 01:25:29,200
Not all elephants are dropping dead of cancer, right?

1483
01:25:29,440 --> 01:25:31,200
So what's going on there?

1484
01:25:31,360 --> 01:25:37,280
And the idea is they must have evolved more cancer defense mechanisms

1485
01:25:37,280 --> 01:25:43,120
than humans, at least, in order to maintain their soma and maintain the amount of

1486
01:25:43,120 --> 01:25:45,840
cells that they have for a really long time, too.

1487
01:25:45,920 --> 01:25:48,080
They can live into their 60s, right?

1488
01:25:48,610 --> 01:25:51,330
Um, so they have this huge body in Soma.

1489
01:25:52,690 --> 01:25:54,770
Um, and so that was proposed.

1490
01:25:54,930 --> 01:25:58,770
And then, okay, so do we test how do we test this?

1491
01:25:58,930 --> 01:26:02,210
And so we worked with actually a bunch of zoos.

1492
01:26:02,610 --> 01:26:05,330
Um, and that's that was a wild ride.

1493
01:26:05,410 --> 01:26:11,330
Um, because um just different zoos have different protocols, but they all have like

1494
01:26:11,410 --> 01:26:16,920
I remember just calling zoos and being like, Do you have data on on cancer and your

1495
01:26:16,920 --> 01:26:17,320
animals?

1496
01:26:17,400 --> 01:26:18,680
And they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

1497
01:26:18,760 --> 01:26:22,760
We could we could work with you and you just gotta fill out a research proposal.

1498
01:26:23,000 --> 01:26:25,400
Um, what species do you want to work on?

1499
01:26:25,480 --> 01:26:27,080
And I said, all of them.

1500
01:26:27,400 --> 01:26:30,360
And they would they were like, no, you can't.

1501
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:31,640
It was like silence.

1502
01:26:32,040 --> 01:26:36,680
Yeah, they're like, no, we don't have the the infrastructure re um to look at that.

1503
01:26:36,760 --> 01:26:40,440
But we eventually started working with a bunch, like it got it got easier.

1504
01:26:40,680 --> 01:26:42,370
Um, and then we tested that.

1505
01:26:42,530 --> 01:26:44,530
Do elephants actually get less cancer?

1506
01:26:44,610 --> 01:26:47,330
Because this was just a really elegant theory, right?

1507
01:26:47,490 --> 01:26:48,210
And I love this.

1508
01:26:48,290 --> 01:26:52,290
I love this is why we need more theory in this kind of work.

1509
01:26:52,450 --> 01:26:53,010
And they do.

1510
01:26:53,170 --> 01:26:55,410
They do, they still get cancer.

1511
01:26:55,730 --> 01:26:56,050
Okay.

1512
01:26:57,170 --> 01:27:03,020
But all else being equal for the amount of cells they have, they get less than

1513
01:27:03,020 --> 01:27:05,980
what is predicted based on humans.

1514
01:27:06,140 --> 01:27:11,900
And then we um a colleagues of mine sequenced their genome and discovered there's a

1515
01:27:11,900 --> 01:27:13,260
gene that we get.

1516
01:27:13,420 --> 01:27:17,500
We have one copy of this gene, two alleles, one from our mom, one from our dad.

1517
01:27:17,740 --> 01:27:23,580
And it's called P53, and it's tagline the guardian of the genome.

1518
01:27:23,820 --> 01:27:24,140
Okay.

1519
01:27:24,620 --> 01:27:29,350
So if you get a mutation, it turns on and it makes decisions.

1520
01:27:29,510 --> 01:27:30,470
Does the cell die?

1521
01:27:30,710 --> 01:27:31,430
Do we fix it?

1522
01:27:31,590 --> 01:27:32,710
Do we do all these things?

1523
01:27:32,790 --> 01:27:34,150
It's a central feature.

1524
01:27:34,230 --> 01:27:35,430
It's highly conserved.

1525
01:27:35,510 --> 01:27:36,630
It's an important gene.

1526
01:27:36,870 --> 01:27:37,910
So we have two copies.

1527
01:27:37,990 --> 01:27:43,910
It seems like elephants have um 40 copies, potentially, up to that many.

1528
01:27:44,150 --> 01:27:46,630
Um, and so that was a really neat discovery.

1529
01:27:46,710 --> 01:27:50,470
It's like, oh, this may be why they get less cancer.

1530
01:27:50,550 --> 01:27:52,470
They have extras of this gene.

1531
01:27:52,630 --> 01:27:58,480
This gene is also, um, if it's mutated, um, it's mutated in about

1532
01:27:58,480 --> 01:28:00,960
70% of cancers, I think, is the estimate.

1533
01:28:01,120 --> 01:28:03,280
So if it gets knocked out, that's pretty bad.

1534
01:28:03,360 --> 01:28:08,320
But if you're an elephant and one gets knocked out and you have backup copies, that might

1535
01:28:08,320 --> 01:28:09,120
just be fine.

1536
01:28:09,280 --> 01:28:10,080
So yeah.

1537
01:28:10,240 --> 01:28:15,200
It's a really good example of theory driven, how efficient theory driven is because if you

1538
01:28:15,200 --> 01:28:20,000
were just like, well, well, what's the chance that you would just what are all the genes

1539
01:28:20,000 --> 01:28:23,050
you could genotype in an elephant or any onion.

1540
01:28:23,370 --> 01:28:23,450
Right.

1541
01:28:24,090 --> 01:28:29,290
So if you just did like blind brute empiricism, the sun would explode by the time you made

1542
01:28:29,290 --> 01:28:30,010
this discovery.

1543
01:28:30,170 --> 01:28:30,330
Yeah.

1544
01:28:30,650 --> 01:28:31,050
Yes.

1545
01:28:31,210 --> 01:28:31,530
Yes.

1546
01:28:31,690 --> 01:28:32,250
Yes.

1547
01:28:33,210 --> 01:28:34,330
More funding is needed, yeah.

1548
01:28:34,410 --> 01:28:38,010
For theory, evolutionary theory in medicine.

1549
01:28:38,570 --> 01:28:43,690
So is the paradox that we would expect more cancer in organisms with more cells because

1550
01:28:43,690 --> 01:28:47,850
there are more opportunities for cancer to evolve given that there are more cell divisions

1551
01:28:47,850 --> 01:28:49,530
and more mutation opportunities.

1552
01:28:49,740 --> 01:28:52,140
and the fact that we don't see that is the paradox.

1553
01:28:52,380 --> 01:28:53,100
Yes, correct.

1554
01:28:53,340 --> 01:28:53,660
Got it.

1555
01:28:53,900 --> 01:28:57,820
Thank you for vocalizing that because it gets a little bit confusing because everyone's

1556
01:28:57,820 --> 01:28:59,820
like proving P Pito's paradox.

1557
01:28:59,900 --> 01:29:05,100
And then like they're like, but wait, did we prove like how do we prove a paradox?

1558
01:29:05,340 --> 01:29:10,540
Like so there's been all this like and then there's just been a little nuance because as

1559
01:29:10,540 --> 01:29:16,150
more data's come out, it does seem like Body size does matter in certain law

1560
01:29:16,150 --> 01:29:21,910
larger animals might have might have an increased risk of cancer.

1561
01:29:22,070 --> 01:29:27,510
Like it's a very small effect, but we really like we're talking about such small numbers

1562
01:29:27,510 --> 01:29:27,750
here.

1563
01:29:27,910 --> 01:29:33,430
And again, it's not as much as expected for an animal with the many cells they have.

1564
01:29:33,590 --> 01:29:36,310
And so um it's yeah.

1565
01:29:36,630 --> 01:29:37,030
Yeah.

1566
01:29:38,340 --> 01:29:39,140
Is there anything to this?

1567
01:29:39,220 --> 01:29:44,260
I I remember reading something, it was like a Scott Alexander Blanc post about how uh one

1568
01:29:44,260 --> 01:29:48,180
reason why whales don't have uh a lot of cancer is that they're so big that their cancer

1569
01:29:48,180 --> 01:29:48,980
gets cancer.

1570
01:29:49,300 --> 01:29:52,740
Is that is that totally uh a dumb idea that has been a little bit more than that?

1571
01:29:52,980 --> 01:29:55,300
It's not it's not that dumb of an idea.

1572
01:29:55,460 --> 01:30:01,370
And I I you know, if cancer cells evolve, they mutate and there there's lots of death and

1573
01:30:01,370 --> 01:30:05,770
selection, and sometimes cancers can collapse in on itself, right?

1574
01:30:06,010 --> 01:30:08,970
And so the idea that that's an idea that's out there.

1575
01:30:09,130 --> 01:30:15,050
There's very little research on whale cancer because they live

1576
01:30:15,050 --> 01:30:19,690
in the ocean and when they die, they end up at the bottom of the ocean.

1577
01:30:19,770 --> 01:30:22,570
So we don't have a lot of research.

1578
01:30:22,810 --> 01:30:28,800
We have our group has looked at the P53 gene in whales to see if they've expanded it

1579
01:30:28,960 --> 01:30:30,640
too, and they haven't.

1580
01:30:31,360 --> 01:30:36,160
But we do think they live too, some of the these whale species live 200 years.

1581
01:30:36,560 --> 01:30:41,360
We can we can guess, we can guess from that lifespan that they're pretty good at not

1582
01:30:41,360 --> 01:30:42,400
getting cancer.

1583
01:30:42,640 --> 01:30:42,880
Yeah.

1584
01:30:43,040 --> 01:30:44,720
Um, what are the mechanisms?

1585
01:30:44,880 --> 01:30:49,680
That's what's really exciting, actually, about a comparative approach is like there's not

1586
01:30:49,680 --> 01:30:50,960
just one solution.

1587
01:30:51,290 --> 01:30:51,530
Yeah.

1588
01:30:51,770 --> 01:30:51,930
Right.

1589
01:30:52,010 --> 01:30:54,410
So elephants have the P53 solution.

1590
01:30:54,650 --> 01:30:55,370
Whales don't.

1591
01:30:55,450 --> 01:30:56,170
What's their solution?

1592
01:30:56,330 --> 01:31:01,690
What if P53 is not very translatable to human, you know, cancer

1593
01:31:01,850 --> 01:31:02,970
therapeutics?

1594
01:31:03,130 --> 01:31:08,970
There's still like a hot, there's such vast biodiversity that we could we could look

1595
01:31:08,970 --> 01:31:14,970
at beyond um elephants and even beyond whales, potentially, um, in terms

1596
01:31:14,970 --> 01:31:15,290
of that.

1597
01:31:15,530 --> 01:31:16,570
So yeah.

1598
01:31:16,810 --> 01:31:20,650
Um, but no, it's not a stupid idea to think maybe the cancer gave cancer too.

1599
01:31:20,810 --> 01:31:23,700
Like we just haven't been able to cool.

1600
01:31:23,780 --> 01:31:24,580
It's such a fun idea.

1601
01:31:24,820 --> 01:31:26,180
I'm glad I'm glad there's some truth to it.

1602
01:31:27,300 --> 01:31:30,660
No one's been able to test it or or prove it.

1603
01:31:30,820 --> 01:31:35,460
We have all of you know, again, we're still in the theory based for for that kind of stuff.

1604
01:31:35,620 --> 01:31:36,260
But yeah.

1605
01:31:36,580 --> 01:31:40,420
Still though, I mean it's it's an incredible sales pitch for the evolutionary perspective

1606
01:31:40,500 --> 01:31:44,820
in that um there's literally something like, you know, a a bunch of different mini cures

1607
01:31:44,820 --> 01:31:47,780
for cancer out there in the animal kingdom that we just don't know about.

1608
01:31:47,940 --> 01:31:53,510
Uh and like that in itself should be the best sales pitch you could ever get for studying

1609
01:31:53,510 --> 01:31:55,910
humans in a in a comparative evolutionary context.

1610
01:31:56,310 --> 01:31:56,950
Yeah.

1611
01:31:57,270 --> 01:31:57,670
Yeah.

1612
01:31:57,830 --> 01:32:03,670
There's I mean there's debates and we we could go on about like what's the

1613
01:32:03,670 --> 01:32:08,470
best species to study, but we tr we always try and stick within mammals because we we hope

1614
01:32:08,470 --> 01:32:10,390
that that might be the most translatable.

1615
01:32:10,470 --> 01:32:13,190
But yeah, there's some really neat species out there.

1616
01:32:13,270 --> 01:32:15,910
Like have you ever heard of the Greenland shark?

1617
01:32:16,340 --> 01:32:16,660
No.

1618
01:32:16,900 --> 01:32:18,020
Is it blind?

1619
01:32:18,740 --> 01:32:19,540
I think so.

1620
01:32:19,780 --> 01:32:20,020
Okay.

1621
01:32:20,100 --> 01:32:20,820
That's all I know.

1622
01:32:21,060 --> 01:32:21,220
Okay.

1623
01:32:22,100 --> 01:32:23,620
I don't even know if I know that.

1624
01:32:23,940 --> 01:32:27,060
Well, I need to learn about this because my daughter's obsessed with sharks, so I'll tell

1625
01:32:27,060 --> 01:32:32,980
her all about it once we're um it's its uh lifespan is estimated to

1626
01:32:32,980 --> 01:32:35,220
be around four or five hundred years.

1627
01:32:35,700 --> 01:32:36,260
Wow.

1628
01:32:37,140 --> 01:32:39,990
And then its age of maturation.

1629
01:32:40,230 --> 01:32:44,150
Do you want to guess what the age of maturation is estimated to be?

1630
01:32:44,470 --> 01:32:45,030
100.

1631
01:32:45,270 --> 01:32:46,790
It's 150.

1632
01:32:47,110 --> 01:32:47,510
Wow.

1633
01:32:47,590 --> 01:32:47,910
Wow.

1634
01:32:48,230 --> 01:32:49,270
It is such a slow.

1635
01:32:49,670 --> 01:32:55,430
And so going back to like life history theory, we think these very slow species are like

1636
01:32:55,430 --> 01:32:58,470
building their cells really carefully.

1637
01:32:59,030 --> 01:33:04,870
And so they have these extra, you know, like, which means they have these extra defenses

1638
01:33:04,870 --> 01:33:05,910
in them, right?

1639
01:33:06,230 --> 01:33:09,320
Like they are so slow growing.

1640
01:33:09,480 --> 01:33:13,800
Um, and I think that's again another if we could go back to the conversation, like why do

1641
01:33:13,800 --> 01:33:14,840
we get cancer?

1642
01:33:15,000 --> 01:33:19,080
It's these trade-offs where like, do I have the opportunity to grow slowly?

1643
01:33:19,240 --> 01:33:19,560
Nope.

1644
01:33:19,720 --> 01:33:25,160
Well, I'm gonna grow less carefully, but I'm going to get big enough to get

1645
01:33:25,480 --> 01:33:30,440
resources and access to mates, um, even though it's a little sloppy, right?

1646
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:33,080
And that's where a lot of organisms end up.

1647
01:33:33,390 --> 01:33:39,070
Greenland Shark clearly doesn't have very many predators and has the opportunity to really

1648
01:33:39,070 --> 01:33:42,590
slow down and take its time and its life history strategy.

1649
01:33:42,670 --> 01:33:43,790
And it's so cool.

1650
01:33:44,110 --> 01:33:44,590
Wow.

1651
01:33:44,750 --> 01:33:45,310
Wow.

1652
01:33:45,630 --> 01:33:46,750
Really cool.

1653
01:33:47,630 --> 01:33:53,630
Um for people who are interested in this kind of approach,

1654
01:33:53,790 --> 01:33:56,910
um, and I can imagine there's two audiences listening.

1655
01:33:57,070 --> 01:34:01,390
One is students who might be interested in like learning more about this or studying

1656
01:34:01,390 --> 01:34:07,080
evolutionary medicine, Uh, in addition to working with you at UCSB, are there

1657
01:34:07,080 --> 01:34:10,360
other, I mean, how many other people are doing this kind of thing?

1658
01:34:10,440 --> 01:34:14,920
And like, are the who who, if there was somebody listening who was like, oh, I'm really

1659
01:34:14,920 --> 01:34:20,760
interested in evolutionary medicine, um, in addition to reaching out to you, who else

1660
01:34:20,760 --> 01:34:21,720
would you suggest?

1661
01:34:21,800 --> 01:34:25,640
I mean, not to put you on the spot about an omission doesn't mean you don't think they're

1662
01:34:25,640 --> 01:34:30,070
doing it, but just first like you have suggestions about like who are people who are

1663
01:34:30,070 --> 01:34:31,190
currently doing this kind of work?

1664
01:34:31,430 --> 01:34:31,670
Yes.

1665
01:34:32,310 --> 01:34:34,230
So we have a we have a society.

1666
01:34:34,470 --> 01:34:38,630
It's called the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health.

1667
01:34:38,790 --> 01:34:42,790
And there's a journal called the Evolution Medicine and Public Health Journal.

1668
01:34:43,350 --> 01:34:49,190
So there's a community there and there's tons of resources on the webpage for different

1669
01:34:49,190 --> 01:34:49,670
groups.

1670
01:34:49,830 --> 01:34:55,760
But then within the US, there's these little pockets that have like hot spots of

1671
01:34:55,760 --> 01:34:57,920
individuals that study evolutionary medicine.

1672
01:34:58,240 --> 01:35:04,240
UCLA has an evolutionary medicine program that's a master's program that's quite great.

1673
01:35:04,960 --> 01:35:10,880
Arizona State University has the Center for Evolution and Medicine and is invested

1674
01:35:10,960 --> 01:35:13,710
in has a bunch of different individuals there.

1675
01:35:13,950 --> 01:35:14,910
There it's interesting.

1676
01:35:14,990 --> 01:35:20,750
They're always within an anthro or or adjacent to an anthropology program and a psychology.

1677
01:35:21,230 --> 01:35:24,190
Like it is this interdisciplinary mix.

1678
01:35:24,830 --> 01:35:30,750
Also Duke has this in the try-sum area has this really great opportunity because there is

1679
01:35:30,750 --> 01:35:36,400
a med school, but also there's like zoos and the Duke Lemer Center and all that.

1680
01:35:36,480 --> 01:35:39,920
And so that's been, but it's within the anthropology department.

1681
01:35:40,080 --> 01:35:45,280
There's been a really big growth in individuals studying evolutionary medicine.

1682
01:35:45,440 --> 01:35:51,200
And then outside of the US, there's there's groups in like Zurich and various other

1683
01:35:51,200 --> 01:35:56,400
countries that are kind of get becoming these hubs for for evolutionary medicine.

1684
01:35:56,800 --> 01:35:57,120
Awesome.

1685
01:35:57,280 --> 01:35:57,920
That sounds great.

1686
01:35:58,070 --> 01:35:58,310
Yeah.

1687
01:35:58,470 --> 01:36:03,910
And then um, and then for people who are not students but are just interested in maybe like

1688
01:36:04,070 --> 01:36:09,990
a not terrible popularization, like are there any are there any resources for

1689
01:36:09,990 --> 01:36:10,150
that?

1690
01:36:10,310 --> 01:36:11,350
I mean, that's a hard question.

1691
01:36:11,510 --> 01:36:16,070
I don't even know what I would tell people like for for what I do for like a popular

1692
01:36:16,070 --> 01:36:16,870
source, you know.

1693
01:36:17,110 --> 01:36:22,230
Are there um, you know, are there books you would recommend for people who are interested

1694
01:36:22,230 --> 01:36:22,550
in?

1695
01:36:23,190 --> 01:36:29,040
Yeah, uh one of the like land like foundational books is Randy

1696
01:36:29,040 --> 01:36:31,760
Nessie and George Williams Why We Get Sick.

1697
01:36:32,560 --> 01:36:37,600
That's a a really great first pass at evolutionary medicine.

1698
01:36:38,240 --> 01:36:44,160
Um and then there's within the cancer community,

1699
01:36:44,320 --> 01:36:49,520
there's a really great book by James DeGregor DeGregory called Adaptive

1700
01:36:49,750 --> 01:36:51,270
oncogenesis.

1701
01:36:51,750 --> 01:36:54,230
That's a tongue tie, but it's a really great book.

1702
01:36:54,470 --> 01:37:00,310
Um, Athena Actipus has written a book called The Cheating Cell, which also um

1703
01:37:00,790 --> 01:37:03,830
is is has an evolutionary perspective.

1704
01:37:04,070 --> 01:37:07,190
Those two are specifically on cancer biology.

1705
01:37:07,510 --> 01:37:13,190
Um, but I think within every subfield of evolutionary medicine, there's probably some more

1706
01:37:13,420 --> 01:37:18,380
um popular stuff that I'm I'm probably forgetting about, but we'll remember as soon as we

1707
01:37:19,020 --> 01:37:19,500
that's awesome.

1708
01:37:19,580 --> 01:37:19,980
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1709
01:37:20,140 --> 01:37:22,940
I'll remember it tonight while I'm like laying down.

1710
01:37:23,660 --> 01:37:23,900
That's great.

1711
01:37:24,060 --> 01:37:24,860
Oh, I forgot this.

1712
01:37:24,940 --> 01:37:28,060
And we're gonna we can always add it to show notes if if we think of something.

1713
01:37:28,220 --> 01:37:32,860
Um do you talk to enough psychologists or are we doing as psychologists a bad job of

1714
01:37:32,860 --> 01:37:35,020
talking to evolutionary medicine people?

1715
01:37:35,180 --> 01:37:39,900
Like the body's hooked up to the yeah do we do yeah the mind and body are all it's it's the

1716
01:37:39,900 --> 01:37:40,540
same thing, you know.

1717
01:37:41,100 --> 01:37:41,420
Right.

1718
01:37:41,580 --> 01:37:47,110
I was just thinking that because it is these fields that are quite distinct

1719
01:37:47,430 --> 01:37:51,590
but have very similar starting points.

1720
01:37:51,750 --> 01:37:52,070
Yeah.

1721
01:37:52,230 --> 01:37:56,950
And like within the evolutionary medicine field, there clearly are

1722
01:37:57,910 --> 01:38:02,070
evolutionary psychiatrists because that's who Randy Nessie is.

1723
01:38:02,390 --> 01:38:03,830
And oh, and here's another book.

1724
01:38:03,990 --> 01:38:09,960
He wrote a book called um good reasons for bad feelings or something along those lines.

1725
01:38:10,280 --> 01:38:15,720
And I I like I like that title, but again talking about how depression can be an

1726
01:38:15,720 --> 01:38:20,520
adaptation and anxiety can be an adaptation and all of these things, right?

1727
01:38:21,000 --> 01:38:26,760
Um but it is interesting that these fields haven't necessarily um

1728
01:38:27,710 --> 01:38:30,190
merged as much as you would imagine.

1729
01:38:30,590 --> 01:38:36,510
But I think there is this historical context of like neck

1730
01:38:36,510 --> 01:38:36,670
up.

1731
01:38:37,070 --> 01:38:37,470
Yeah, totally.

1732
01:38:41,150 --> 01:38:41,310
Yeah.

1733
01:38:41,390 --> 01:38:47,230
You're working in the that area and I'm I'm gonna stay away from humans and

1734
01:38:47,230 --> 01:38:52,980
how they um make decisions and yeah but you would I mean from a first

1735
01:38:52,980 --> 01:38:58,900
principles uh evolutionary perspective you would very much expect that the the mind

1736
01:38:59,220 --> 01:39:04,900
and the decision making and the control system is very much dependent on like what's the

1737
01:39:04,900 --> 01:39:06,660
state of the thing I'm in, right?

1738
01:39:06,820 --> 01:39:12,100
Like so this this thing of uh um like I know there's like work like Josh Schneidgross we

1739
01:39:12,100 --> 01:39:17,610
should have him on with the lassitude right but there should be all kinds of psychological

1740
01:39:17,610 --> 01:39:22,170
contingencies with uh what's the state of the body, right?

1741
01:39:22,250 --> 01:39:23,210
And back and forth.

1742
01:39:23,370 --> 01:39:25,610
You would expect that on first principles, right?

1743
01:39:25,850 --> 01:39:26,410
Yes.

1744
01:39:26,730 --> 01:39:27,050
Absolutely.

1745
01:39:27,370 --> 01:39:32,810
And and honestly, I see like ways where like, okay, so evolutionary medicine has maybe

1746
01:39:32,810 --> 01:39:36,010
provided these kind of drastic ways we treat people.

1747
01:39:36,170 --> 01:39:37,360
It could be different, right?

1748
01:39:37,520 --> 01:39:39,680
And then we don't see uptake in it, right?

1749
01:39:39,840 --> 01:39:45,760
Like, for example, like when I talk about the cancer therapy of maybe control versus

1750
01:39:45,760 --> 01:39:51,200
cure, we clearly need people to understand why people make the

1751
01:39:51,200 --> 01:39:55,120
decisions they make and why they avoid the decisions they make.

1752
01:39:55,360 --> 01:40:01,270
And what in and are there ways you could, you know, tap into that better so they could

1753
01:40:01,270 --> 01:40:03,430
understand and and be able to?

1754
01:40:03,830 --> 01:40:04,310
Oh, interesting.

1755
01:40:04,390 --> 01:40:07,510
So you're even talking about like the psychology of like the intervention and how people

1756
01:40:07,750 --> 01:40:09,270
metaphors people use to think.

1757
01:40:09,430 --> 01:40:10,550
That's a really cool idea.

1758
01:40:10,710 --> 01:40:12,070
That's that's something, yeah.

1759
01:40:12,150 --> 01:40:15,030
Like how do people think about medicine or the body?

1760
01:40:15,270 --> 01:40:15,830
Yes.

1761
01:40:16,070 --> 01:40:17,510
Yeah, that's really cool.

1762
01:40:17,670 --> 01:40:19,910
I don't know if there are any psychology on that.

1763
01:40:20,230 --> 01:40:23,700
Like folk folk physiology, more or less.

1764
01:40:23,860 --> 01:40:29,860
I mean, aside from maybe like how do how do the how do the dumb, wrong natives think

1765
01:40:30,100 --> 01:40:30,900
about science?

1766
01:40:30,980 --> 01:40:33,060
Like that's I'm I'm aware of work on that.

1767
01:40:33,300 --> 01:40:37,620
Like but like there's a bit of stuff on like scare quotes for people who couldn't see

1768
01:40:37,700 --> 01:40:37,780
right.

1769
01:40:37,940 --> 01:40:42,590
I'm saying like it was a very col it was very like poo-pooing like, you know, yes,

1770
01:40:42,830 --> 01:40:44,990
ethnographic knowledge that was probably very valuable.

1771
01:40:45,070 --> 01:40:45,870
But yeah, I don't know.

1772
01:40:46,030 --> 01:40:51,790
Is there work on sort of like the intuitive psychology of medicine or physiology or

1773
01:40:51,790 --> 01:40:55,870
mys like in the same way there's like a theory of mind, is there like a theory of body,

1774
01:40:55,950 --> 01:40:56,110
right?

1775
01:40:56,510 --> 01:40:57,070
Theory of medicine.

1776
01:40:57,230 --> 01:41:00,030
Like uh we m there might be very well be folk medicine.

1777
01:41:00,350 --> 01:41:00,670
Yeah, yeah.

1778
01:41:00,990 --> 01:41:01,150
Right.

1779
01:41:01,230 --> 01:41:06,780
There I mean there is folk medicine, but I'm I'm ignorant enough to that to not know if it

1780
01:41:06,780 --> 01:41:08,860
kind of talks about this broader.

1781
01:41:09,340 --> 01:41:13,820
There's a bit of stuff I mean about like, you know, medicinal practices and hunter gatherer

1782
01:41:13,820 --> 01:41:18,140
societies and how they all they often have pretty impressive you know herbal knowledge and

1783
01:41:18,140 --> 01:41:22,220
and remedies and and that's intertwined with like you know the study of shamanism and stuff

1784
01:41:22,220 --> 01:41:22,620
like that.

1785
01:41:23,260 --> 01:41:23,660
Yes.

1786
01:41:23,970 --> 01:41:26,850
And you know, it's still there's still some debate about like how much of that is actually

1787
01:41:26,850 --> 01:41:30,770
effective and how much of it is is just kind of a a a ritual or superstition.

1788
01:41:30,850 --> 01:41:36,290
And I'm I'm agnostic about that question, but um it seems like a hugely understudied and

1789
01:41:36,290 --> 01:41:40,930
important topic given how much medicine is interfacing with our lives and with the modern

1790
01:41:40,930 --> 01:41:45,970
world, just getting a handle on how we think about it and how our representations of

1791
01:41:45,970 --> 01:41:49,490
medicine you know interact with our own ability to cope with illness.

1792
01:41:50,620 --> 01:41:56,140
But I I do see that the there is a divide where people study that as in terms of like

1793
01:41:56,460 --> 01:42:01,100
folk medicine or, you know, like traditional medicine, but we're not thinking about it in

1794
01:42:01,100 --> 01:42:07,020
terms of like industrial pop industrialized population in our our m

1795
01:42:07,100 --> 01:42:08,140
medicine, right?

1796
01:42:08,300 --> 01:42:08,460
Yeah.

1797
01:42:08,860 --> 01:42:12,610
Um, where there's not really that crossover.

1798
01:42:12,930 --> 01:42:13,810
Yeah, it's still important.

1799
01:42:14,130 --> 01:42:14,930
It's all folk medicine.

1800
01:42:15,010 --> 01:42:15,730
It's all folk medicine.

1801
01:42:15,970 --> 01:42:16,050
Yeah.

1802
01:42:16,130 --> 01:42:20,290
It's still I mean basically, you know, doctor is a large part of the doctor's job is to be

1803
01:42:20,290 --> 01:42:21,810
a shaman in a white lab coat.

1804
01:42:21,890 --> 01:42:27,570
You know, like I mean, even from like you don't like if you're a a

1805
01:42:27,570 --> 01:42:33,490
researcher in a lab, you do so many rituals before you run your experiment to do a

1806
01:42:33,490 --> 01:42:34,050
discovery.

1807
01:42:34,210 --> 01:42:39,920
Like you you are just like there is still so much of that psychology

1808
01:42:40,080 --> 01:42:43,200
that we just we can't like I can't mess this up.

1809
01:42:43,280 --> 01:42:46,240
I did it worked yesterday, so I have to wear the same outfit.

1810
01:42:46,320 --> 01:42:46,960
I have to do this.

1811
01:42:47,120 --> 01:42:47,840
I have to do that.

1812
01:42:48,000 --> 01:42:52,720
Like there's still so much of that within with within labs.

1813
01:42:52,880 --> 01:42:58,560
You know, they have like special like I don't know, this is my good luck pipette, like all

1814
01:42:58,560 --> 01:43:04,290
of this stuff to get to get things to work that I I don't think we've moved that far away

1815
01:43:04,290 --> 01:43:04,610
from it.

1816
01:43:04,770 --> 01:43:06,210
We just call it something different.

1817
01:43:06,450 --> 01:43:06,610
Yeah.

1818
01:43:06,770 --> 01:43:07,410
It makes sense.

1819
01:43:07,570 --> 01:43:07,810
Yeah.

1820
01:43:07,890 --> 01:43:08,370
Yeah.

1821
01:43:08,690 --> 01:43:09,010
Yeah.

1822
01:43:09,330 --> 01:43:13,810
As as Rob Boyd once said, uh, and it always stuck with me, the world is opaque, right?

1823
01:43:14,050 --> 01:43:15,250
Like the world is opaque.

1824
01:43:15,330 --> 01:43:18,050
So you have to yeah, it's everything is a mystery.

1825
01:43:18,130 --> 01:43:18,290
Yeah.

1826
01:43:19,170 --> 01:43:19,250
Yeah.

1827
01:43:19,330 --> 01:43:21,890
We we were just talking uh to Clark Barrett about that.

1828
01:43:21,970 --> 01:43:27,120
Um uh the episode we just released yesterday about how about uh ritual practices and like

1829
01:43:27,120 --> 01:43:29,680
uh pre-hunting dances that the Shuar engage in.

1830
01:43:31,440 --> 01:43:34,640
Yeah, and he made the interesting point that like a lot of our statistical practices are

1831
01:43:34,720 --> 01:43:37,600
you know have the same kind of logic where we don't really know how they work, we're just

1832
01:43:37,600 --> 01:43:40,080
accepting them because the ancestors have bequeathed them to us.

1833
01:43:40,160 --> 01:43:44,960
And it's it's not all that different from a ritual, like a hunting dance or a ritual.

1834
01:43:46,080 --> 01:43:47,280
Yes, yes, yes.

1835
01:43:47,600 --> 01:43:52,610
Yeah, which I think maybe, yeah, coming back to thinking about applying that in terms of

1836
01:43:52,610 --> 01:43:58,610
getting evolutionary medicine or or any evolutionary perspectives into something is it's

1837
01:43:58,610 --> 01:44:03,570
not already in that ritual doing right.

1838
01:44:03,810 --> 01:44:07,490
Like it's just like, no, we don't do it that way.

1839
01:44:07,570 --> 01:44:08,610
We have to do it this way.

1840
01:44:08,770 --> 01:44:13,170
And yeah, I think it's really unfortunate because it's probably how we structure medical

1841
01:44:13,170 --> 01:44:18,580
schools, it's how we structure schools in general, like in terms of silos.

1842
01:44:18,820 --> 01:44:24,420
Like I want students at UCSB to not have to just take a major

1843
01:44:24,420 --> 01:44:24,900
classes.

1844
01:44:25,060 --> 01:44:30,900
I want them to be able to take classes from all over campus and that and it that's just not

1845
01:44:30,900 --> 01:44:31,220
possible.

1846
01:44:31,300 --> 01:44:36,450
And I feel like you ask why and people are like, well, because we have

1847
01:44:36,610 --> 01:44:37,410
departments.

1848
01:44:37,570 --> 01:44:38,050
And yeah.

1849
01:44:38,210 --> 01:44:39,570
And then you're like, but why?

1850
01:44:40,050 --> 01:44:40,850
Why do we have departments?

1851
01:44:41,170 --> 01:44:42,130
Why do we have departments?

1852
01:44:42,210 --> 01:44:45,410
And they're like, well, because and like and it's all of this stuff.

1853
01:44:45,490 --> 01:44:51,090
And it's like, but but we could we could have bigger, better learners if we could

1854
01:44:51,410 --> 01:44:54,610
have crosstalk across so many different disciplines.

1855
01:44:54,770 --> 01:45:00,340
But and I feel like it always lands on it's either because it's difficult and we've always

1856
01:45:00,340 --> 01:45:01,220
done it this way.

1857
01:45:01,300 --> 01:45:03,220
And those two things are in a loop.

1858
01:45:03,460 --> 01:45:03,700
Yes.

1859
01:45:03,940 --> 01:45:04,100
Right.

1860
01:45:04,500 --> 01:45:08,420
So we're doing it on the other way is more difficult because we've always done it this way.

1861
01:45:08,500 --> 01:45:09,860
And we've always done it this way.

1862
01:45:09,940 --> 01:45:13,860
And that's you know, it's not a good reason to do things, but it yeah, it is hard to change

1863
01:45:13,860 --> 01:45:14,100
things.

1864
01:45:14,180 --> 01:45:14,500
Yeah.

1865
01:45:14,900 --> 01:45:15,300
It is.

1866
01:45:15,460 --> 01:45:15,700
Yeah.

1867
01:45:15,940 --> 01:45:16,260
Yeah.

1868
01:45:16,500 --> 01:45:20,340
How did you um we're we're we're getting closer to the end here.

1869
01:45:20,580 --> 01:45:25,060
Um, how did you you talked about sort of the way biology is taught in school.

1870
01:45:25,140 --> 01:45:28,420
And David and I have talked a little bit about how, at least for me, I don't want to speak

1871
01:45:28,420 --> 01:45:28,820
for David.

1872
01:45:28,990 --> 01:45:33,470
Like I was like learning parts of the grasshopper in by in like high school bio.

1873
01:45:33,710 --> 01:45:38,270
I had a great high school in many ways, but the bio sor like at least at the time I was

1874
01:45:38,270 --> 01:45:39,150
taking it was horrible.

1875
01:45:39,230 --> 01:45:41,550
It was just laundry list, it was stamp collecting.

1876
01:45:41,630 --> 01:45:43,070
There were no principles.

1877
01:45:43,310 --> 01:45:45,950
Um, were you interested in biology?

1878
01:45:46,110 --> 01:45:51,790
How did you get interested in in in in like Amy body as a kid?

1879
01:45:51,870 --> 01:45:52,910
Like, how did you get here?

1880
01:45:53,070 --> 01:45:55,310
Like, how do you is there a story?

1881
01:45:55,390 --> 01:45:59,280
Um it's the most boring story.

1882
01:45:59,360 --> 01:46:03,760
No, I was not inter not necessarily interested in the natural world.

1883
01:46:03,840 --> 01:46:09,200
I mean, as much as any kid, like I was, you know, in the 80s, you're outside all day long

1884
01:46:09,440 --> 01:46:12,000
observing things and and doing all that.

1885
01:46:12,160 --> 01:46:18,000
And I always liked maybe um like math and and lean towards more

1886
01:46:18,000 --> 01:46:23,680
like quantitative type of analyses and stuff like that, but it

1887
01:46:23,730 --> 01:46:29,570
wasn't until a community college class that I

1888
01:46:29,570 --> 01:46:33,250
took and it was a biology class, and the professor was amazing.

1889
01:46:33,330 --> 01:46:35,730
And he was so excited about biology.

1890
01:46:35,970 --> 01:46:40,210
Um, and I was like, oh wow, this is this is great, right?

1891
01:46:40,290 --> 01:46:41,570
And this is really cool.

1892
01:46:41,730 --> 01:46:43,250
And the same thing with evolution.

1893
01:46:43,410 --> 01:46:47,330
I had no evolution in my high school training at all.

1894
01:46:47,490 --> 01:46:53,040
Like, I don't think we learned about it at right now, I have a 14 year old daughter.

1895
01:46:53,200 --> 01:46:55,280
She is learning about natural selection.

1896
01:46:55,440 --> 01:46:57,600
And I'm always like, wait, you're learning that?

1897
01:46:57,760 --> 01:46:58,960
I'm teaching my undergrad.

1898
01:47:02,000 --> 01:47:06,880
But there is a disconnect, and you have to like you have to reteach these principles

1899
01:47:06,880 --> 01:47:10,480
because you don't know if everyone is getting the same education.

1900
01:47:10,720 --> 01:47:15,360
Um, and so I always start from the beginning when I'm I'm teaching these these classes.

1901
01:47:15,680 --> 01:47:21,450
But yeah, I didn't really start studying biology until I

1902
01:47:21,450 --> 01:47:23,130
was in community college.

1903
01:47:23,210 --> 01:47:24,090
And it was the same thing.

1904
01:47:24,170 --> 01:47:28,890
We're doing labs and dissecting mice and various things.

1905
01:47:29,210 --> 01:47:30,970
And I really liked it.

1906
01:47:31,050 --> 01:47:34,730
And I really liked evolution too, those those types of classes.

1907
01:47:34,810 --> 01:47:36,810
It really opened my mind up.

1908
01:47:37,210 --> 01:47:39,690
Um, so yeah.

1909
01:47:41,660 --> 01:47:43,100
Steven, you were gonna say something.

1910
01:47:43,580 --> 01:47:47,340
No, I mean I think we're about getting to that part of the episode where we ask our

1911
01:47:47,340 --> 01:47:49,020
question about questions.

1912
01:47:49,260 --> 01:47:50,860
Yeah, should we have asked you anything?

1913
01:47:51,020 --> 01:47:51,420
Yes.

1914
01:47:52,540 --> 01:47:55,580
Oh, that's such a tricky question.

1915
01:47:56,380 --> 01:48:01,420
I know we we often if it if it is a spring, we spring it on you and then we give you a few

1916
01:48:01,420 --> 01:48:06,860
minutes a few seconds, we we banter about something else to yeah, to um uh um

1917
01:48:07,390 --> 01:48:12,190
give you a second to think about if there's anything else that we should have asked you

1918
01:48:12,190 --> 01:48:12,510
about.

1919
01:48:12,750 --> 01:48:13,390
Yeah.

1920
01:48:15,550 --> 01:48:16,670
It's a hard question.

1921
01:48:16,910 --> 01:48:17,550
I know.

1922
01:48:17,710 --> 01:48:17,950
Yeah.

1923
01:48:18,750 --> 01:48:19,790
I can't think of anything.

1924
01:48:20,030 --> 01:48:20,350
That's fine.

1925
01:48:20,430 --> 01:48:20,670
Yeah, yeah.

1926
01:48:21,070 --> 01:48:21,710
That's totally okay.

1927
01:48:22,430 --> 01:48:22,590
Yeah.

1928
01:48:22,670 --> 01:48:26,590
Mo I I don't I can't think of a single guest who like totally except for I don't know,

1929
01:48:26,670 --> 01:48:30,110
maybe maybe like Josh Tiber was like because he's a fan, he like he knew we were gonna ask

1930
01:48:30,110 --> 01:48:31,550
him he like came with like a great answer.

1931
01:48:32,910 --> 01:48:34,700
But like we should maybe we should stop.

1932
01:48:35,900 --> 01:48:36,620
Yeah, maybe we should have a lot of people.

1933
01:48:36,780 --> 01:48:40,220
No, I think it's a good one because some people could be like, oh wait, we didn't talk

1934
01:48:40,220 --> 01:48:40,380
about this.

1935
01:48:43,020 --> 01:48:43,660
People are psychic.

1936
01:48:44,060 --> 01:48:45,740
I promoted a a book or something like that.

1937
01:48:45,900 --> 01:48:46,700
Yeah, no, exactly.

1938
01:48:46,780 --> 01:48:47,260
Yeah, yeah.

1939
01:48:47,500 --> 01:48:47,660
Yeah.

1940
01:48:47,820 --> 01:48:48,460
No, grift.

1941
01:48:48,620 --> 01:48:49,740
This is your chance to grip.

1942
01:48:51,340 --> 01:48:52,220
No, this was great.

1943
01:48:52,380 --> 01:48:58,140
I love that we were able to talk about both worlds and of my research and connect them.

1944
01:48:58,220 --> 01:48:58,830
And yeah.

1945
01:48:59,230 --> 01:49:00,350
Yeah, it's it's really great.

1946
01:49:00,430 --> 01:49:04,350
And I mean one of the things I'm like people are who listen are probably bored by this, but

1947
01:49:04,430 --> 01:49:08,270
like you and I, Amy, you and I are colleagues, but I never get a chance to talk about

1948
01:49:08,270 --> 01:49:08,670
science.

1949
01:49:08,830 --> 01:49:11,150
This is one of the reasons for doing this is just yes.

1950
01:49:11,310 --> 01:49:13,790
It's a great chance to like talk about science.

1951
01:49:14,350 --> 01:49:14,990
Absolutely.

1952
01:49:15,230 --> 01:49:15,790
Yeah.

1953
01:49:16,030 --> 01:49:18,350
Um well thank you for doing what you're doing.

1954
01:49:18,510 --> 01:49:24,190
Um you're literally like helping us understand how like cancer works and you're doing

1955
01:49:24,420 --> 01:49:29,620
you're still, you might, for all we know, a year or two from now, you might discover

1956
01:49:29,620 --> 01:49:34,020
something in Wales that revolutionizes, you know, what was it?

1957
01:49:34,100 --> 01:49:35,220
The P35.

1958
01:49:35,540 --> 01:49:36,100
P53.

1959
01:49:36,340 --> 01:49:36,900
P53.

1960
01:49:36,980 --> 01:49:37,700
Uh I tried.

1961
01:49:38,020 --> 01:49:38,580
Okay, close.

1962
01:49:38,740 --> 01:49:39,060
Close enough.

1963
01:49:39,540 --> 01:49:42,980
So uh yeah, no, it's just incredible.

1964
01:49:43,060 --> 01:49:48,660
And I hope that um you have lots and lots of students knocking on your doors and lots of

1965
01:49:48,660 --> 01:49:49,140
funders.

1966
01:49:49,220 --> 01:49:52,500
And it sounds like the funding agencies really need to get their act together too.

1967
01:49:52,870 --> 01:49:58,870
I mean, welcome to the the new state of America funding

1968
01:49:58,870 --> 01:49:59,350
situations.

1969
01:49:59,590 --> 01:49:59,670
Yeah.

1970
01:49:59,910 --> 01:50:04,550
But it sounds like even before, like the the binning and the silos and the like kind of

1971
01:50:04,550 --> 01:50:10,310
presuming the categories of solutions ahead of time made it so that this was sort of an

1972
01:50:10,310 --> 01:50:13,270
odd man out or not in the Venn diagram, maybe.

1973
01:50:13,430 --> 01:50:13,590
Yeah.

1974
01:50:13,900 --> 01:50:14,140
Yeah.

1975
01:50:14,300 --> 01:50:17,820
And a lot of funding agencies are like, we want something risky, and then they're like, not

1976
01:50:17,980 --> 01:50:18,780
that risky.

1977
01:50:19,260 --> 01:50:24,940
It's like their idea of risky and my idea of risky are not in the same category.

1978
01:50:25,100 --> 01:50:26,700
And so that's unfortunate.

1979
01:50:26,860 --> 01:50:30,460
But there's foundations that fund some of this stuff.

1980
01:50:30,540 --> 01:50:31,260
And yeah.

1981
01:50:31,660 --> 01:50:31,820
Yeah.

1982
01:50:31,980 --> 01:50:36,300
So if you if you really if you have a lot, if you're listening, you have a lot of money,

1983
01:50:36,460 --> 01:50:41,930
then that you would love to have a high risk, hype possible like cancer solution, contact

1984
01:50:41,930 --> 01:50:42,650
Amy Body.

1985
01:50:43,050 --> 01:50:43,930
Yes, there you go.

1986
01:50:44,170 --> 01:50:44,730
Absolutely.

1987
01:50:45,050 --> 01:50:47,690
We don't do ads, but that's an ad we can do.

1988
01:50:49,690 --> 01:50:50,170
Yes.

1989
01:50:50,410 --> 01:50:50,810
Yeah.

1990
01:50:51,130 --> 01:50:52,810
Do you is there any like seriously?

1991
01:50:52,970 --> 01:50:56,730
Is there any other things like where people, if they want to like, are there certain

1992
01:50:56,730 --> 01:51:00,330
projects that you think like if people are interested in supporting them, like are there

1993
01:51:00,330 --> 01:51:05,290
other ones, or is that the general thing that it's um yeah?

1994
01:51:05,860 --> 01:51:09,860
Um yeah, I there's tons of like, yeah.

1995
01:51:10,020 --> 01:51:15,780
There's I mean, the whole world of I mean, we talk a lot about evolutionary medicine, but

1996
01:51:15,780 --> 01:51:21,620
the the whole world of comparative biology is just understudied in so many different

1997
01:51:21,620 --> 01:51:21,940
ways.

1998
01:51:22,100 --> 01:51:27,940
And then we only study the species that matter for who they matter for

1999
01:51:27,940 --> 01:51:28,980
and the population.

2000
01:51:29,140 --> 01:51:32,570
So like, yeah, it's just cool.

2001
01:51:32,730 --> 01:51:33,290
Yeah, yeah.

2002
01:51:33,450 --> 01:51:35,130
Lots of incredible things.

2003
01:51:35,290 --> 01:51:37,210
So um, well, thanks for being on.

2004
01:51:37,290 --> 01:51:38,490
It was it was a pleasure.

2005
01:51:38,570 --> 01:51:44,570
Um, it was really good talking, and we'll um I I like that we're as a as

2006
01:51:44,570 --> 01:51:50,330
an evolutionary psychology podcast, we're also talking to people who

2007
01:51:50,330 --> 01:51:55,370
are doing an evolution who are adaptationists who are doing evolutionary approach, but

2008
01:51:55,370 --> 01:52:00,810
studying or and studying, no but, but and studying the rest of the body or the

2009
01:52:01,120 --> 01:52:06,720
this this issue of the psychology and the and the physiology we need to start talking more.

2010
01:52:07,040 --> 01:52:09,040
Yeah absolutely this was so fun.

2011
01:52:09,520 --> 01:52:10,400
Thank you for having me on.

2012
01:52:10,960 --> 01:52:11,440
It was wonderful.

2013
01:52:11,520 --> 01:52:11,920
Thanks so much.

2014
01:52:12,320 --> 01:52:12,800
Our pleasure.

2015
01:52:12,880 --> 01:52:13,840
Thanks so much.

2016
01:52:17,200 --> 01:52:22,160
I learned a lot in this episode and um we know I think people who have been listening to

2017
01:52:22,160 --> 01:52:27,830
the podcast know they can, you know, subscribe and like uh leave positive comments.

2018
01:52:27,990 --> 01:52:30,390
Um we have a Patreon page.

2019
01:52:30,630 --> 01:52:33,030
Um am I leaving anything out?

2020
01:52:33,510 --> 01:52:35,110
I think those are the big ones.

2021
01:52:35,270 --> 01:52:35,910
Uh yeah.

2022
01:52:36,070 --> 01:52:41,990
Just uh support us in in whatever way you can help us push the uh

2023
01:52:42,150 --> 01:52:46,070
the evolutionary framework wider and farther.

2024
01:52:46,600 --> 01:52:52,520
Um we also had um we've also gotten some emails from people and some suggestions

2025
01:52:52,520 --> 01:52:55,720
for guests and that's always appreciated um as well.

2026
01:52:55,880 --> 01:52:59,480
So um yeah and suggestions for topics.

2027
01:52:59,800 --> 01:53:03,480
Um and nobody's gotten David a um fanny pack yet.

2028
01:53:03,800 --> 01:53:06,360
I am starting to get a little peeved to be honest Dave.

2029
01:53:06,680 --> 01:53:11,210
I've been waiting on that fanny pack for months now and it has not arrived.

2030
01:53:11,770 --> 01:53:15,610
I'm starting to think that you know our listeners don't really have a lot of respect for

2031
01:53:15,610 --> 01:53:15,770
me.

2032
01:53:16,090 --> 01:53:16,410
Okay.

2033
01:53:16,570 --> 01:53:18,570
That's them them's fighting words.

2034
01:53:18,730 --> 01:53:23,050
Um uh and you said green or black?

2035
01:53:23,690 --> 01:53:25,130
Uh I you know, either one.

2036
01:53:25,450 --> 01:53:28,650
Have you come around to have you decided ideally green and black?

2037
01:53:28,890 --> 01:53:29,610
Striped.

2038
01:53:30,090 --> 01:53:30,410
Okay.

2039
01:53:30,810 --> 01:53:31,320
All right.

2040
01:53:31,480 --> 01:53:32,920
Well, that's one way to do it.

2041
01:53:33,080 --> 01:53:33,400
Okay.

2042
01:53:33,560 --> 01:53:33,800
Yeah.

2043
01:53:34,600 --> 01:53:36,680
Um, and French fries, that's the other thing.

2044
01:53:36,760 --> 01:53:39,320
If you're bringing up the phone, the french fries inside the fanny pack.

2045
01:53:39,400 --> 01:53:42,360
You you you know what I like, listeners.

2046
01:53:42,680 --> 01:53:44,280
You know you know your way to my heart.

2047
01:53:45,240 --> 01:53:46,360
It's so ridiculous.

2048
01:53:46,520 --> 01:53:46,760
Okay.

2049
01:53:46,920 --> 01:53:48,280
Um, well, have a good week.

2050
01:53:48,360 --> 01:53:49,560
Uh thank you for listening.

2051
01:53:49,640 --> 01:53:51,320
Uh, and uh, we'll see you next week.

2052
01:53:51,640 --> 01:53:52,200
See ya