WEBVTT

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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.

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And if you're the mother, you land on a different trade-off point than if you're not the

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mother is simply because, you know, like, yeah, the mom might die, but like my offspring

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might be better off, and it's not me.

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So like it's you know, obviously it's not explicit, but it's just cold calculus.

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So I think even I would I would think, at least off the top of my head, it seems like even

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that, just because you're not the body risking death or you're not the one investing,

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there's still a conflict between those two.

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You don't land on the same threshold.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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But yeah, I think it it's more of a historical legacy evolutionarily because obviously

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within humans, we um if there's a tons of data to show if if if mother

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dies, baby does not have a good chance of surviving.

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Oh, that's true.

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Yeah.

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Um so I think a historical legacy I see um that

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we have, you know It's why we get sick.

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Perhaps from an ancestral form in in which maternal uh mortality wouldn't have been such a

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death sentence for the kid, perhaps an ancestral form.

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Or more polyga more polygamy or something.

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Oh, interesting.

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Yeah, because we're we're hyper adaptationists.

00:16:10.640 --> 00:16:12.560
We're like, it must be designed perfectly.

00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:15.360
That's why is this, yeah.

00:16:15.520 --> 00:16:16.080
Oh yeah.

00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:16.880
Yes.

00:16:17.170 --> 00:16:17.330
Yes.

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

00:16:23.570 --> 00:16:25.890
that somehow is still able to reproduce.

00:16:26.130 --> 00:16:26.370
Yeah.

00:16:26.690 --> 00:16:31.330
Like we're just like there's all these internal conflicts and and there's adaptive

00:16:31.330 --> 00:16:34.050
compromises and then it just like yeah.

00:16:34.210 --> 00:16:34.530
Yes.

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.

00:16:39.410 --> 00:16:43.380
Like people often celebrate like soldiers and things, and I'm like, you know, it's

00:16:43.380 --> 00:16:43.860
violence.

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.

00:16:48.260 --> 00:16:48.500
Yes.

00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:52.100
Like there are heroes, real heroes in the world every day.

00:16:52.260 --> 00:16:53.860
Uh they're in a maternity ward.

00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:55.540
It's incre I mean, it's crazy.

00:16:55.700 --> 00:16:55.940
Yes.

00:16:56.260 --> 00:16:58.100
Yes, yes, absolutely.

00:16:58.500 --> 00:16:59.940
Um anyway.

00:17:00.580 --> 00:17:05.780
So yeah, uh, that all to say that there's cells that then get transferred

00:17:06.070 --> 00:17:09.830
between our like deeply invasive placenta, right?

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

00:17:15.910 --> 00:17:18.550
that get transferred into the baby's body.

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

00:17:24.390 --> 00:17:25.190
placenta.

00:17:25.350 --> 00:17:31.030
Um, but then it was observed in species that don't necessarily have as a deeply

00:17:31.030 --> 00:17:36.780
invasive placenta that have that like road, um, that that highway that um

00:17:36.780 --> 00:17:38.380
our placentas have.

00:17:38.540 --> 00:17:43.820
Um and also these cells persist decades

00:17:44.460 --> 00:17:48.140
after the pregnancy, and they're doing things.

00:17:48.380 --> 00:17:53.820
So um we think that potentially there is an adaptation there, and they're

00:17:53.980 --> 00:17:59.750
they're actually um selected for to help with the pregnancy, but also

00:17:59.750 --> 00:18:02.390
help with that organism afterwards.

00:18:03.350 --> 00:18:09.190
And that actually sometimes that can still lead

00:18:09.190 --> 00:18:10.070
to conflict.

00:18:10.230 --> 00:18:12.710
So that can still lead to problems.

00:18:13.110 --> 00:18:19.110
So another way to put it, if I understand right, is that the mechanisms in

00:18:19.110 --> 00:18:24.920
the mother have a have a biochemical sample of the

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:30.760
at least the genetics, if not other substances of her offspring inside

00:18:30.760 --> 00:18:31.320
of her.

00:18:31.640 --> 00:18:32.120
Yes.

00:18:32.360 --> 00:18:32.840
Yeah.

00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:33.800
Yes.

00:18:34.680 --> 00:18:39.560
Um, and we we think they last last a lifetime and they have like

00:18:40.040 --> 00:18:41.720
biological impacts.

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

00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:48.840
fetal conflict perspective.

00:18:49.810 --> 00:18:54.770
it's the baby's insurance policy that the mom will take care of it after

00:18:55.410 --> 00:18:56.290
birth, right?

00:18:56.450 --> 00:19:00.290
It's it's been like a really costly negotiation for nine months.

00:19:00.530 --> 00:19:06.130
Um, and now there's cells inside the mother that could maybe potentially

00:19:06.130 --> 00:19:08.930
help the mother care for the baby even more.

00:19:09.090 --> 00:19:14.370
So maybe they're involved in lactation biology, attachment, like all of these things,

00:19:14.530 --> 00:19:20.480
helping the mother heal after the pregnancy as well, um, in order to

00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:23.440
make sure they have the best shot at survival.

00:19:23.840 --> 00:19:26.320
So is it it that's really interesting?

00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:32.160
Is it because the baby is new and has new genetics and has

00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:33.120
new stuff?

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?

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

00:19:43.360 --> 00:19:46.720
obviously like there's there's so much here, like the pathogen coevolution and stuff.

00:19:47.120 --> 00:19:51.170
So the idea is that baby cells are special, fresh.

00:19:51.410 --> 00:19:52.610
This is the metaphor.

00:19:52.770 --> 00:19:55.250
And they're coming in and like hyper helping the mom.

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.

00:20:01.170 --> 00:20:02.130
I that's the idea.

00:20:02.290 --> 00:20:03.330
So we don't know, right?

00:20:03.490 --> 00:20:07.490
This is like um it's it's a newish field.

00:20:07.570 --> 00:20:10.450
I don't want to say completely not new because we knew about this forever.

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

00:20:14.930 --> 00:20:15.330
host.

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.

00:20:21.320 --> 00:20:24.280
Actually, what they used to do is look for the Y chromosome.

00:20:24.360 --> 00:20:26.600
So it was women who had given birth to a son.

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

00:20:32.040 --> 00:20:32.760
still here.

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

00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:39.320
still found Y chromosome in their blood.

00:20:40.280 --> 00:20:43.870
And then it was like, where are those coming from?

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

00:20:49.870 --> 00:20:51.630
and still found the same.

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

00:20:57.470 --> 00:20:59.390
before you even know you're pregnant.

00:21:00.190 --> 00:21:06.160
And so you could have been had a really early spontaneous miscarriage, never knew about

00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:08.960
it and had cells seeded into your body.

00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:09.440
Wow.

00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:10.560
Um wow.

00:21:11.120 --> 00:21:17.120
We also learned that obviously you can have that effect if it's twinning

00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:20.080
in utero, and then the twin doesn't.

00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:20.720
Right.

00:21:21.280 --> 00:21:26.640
But there's this really nice study looking at um um these

00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:32.470
girl Danish girls and showing that they it was before they went through

00:21:32.470 --> 00:21:33.270
menarchy.

00:21:33.350 --> 00:21:38.230
So before they had an opportunity or chance to be pregnant, and they still found Y

00:21:38.390 --> 00:21:40.710
chromosome in in their blood.

00:21:40.790 --> 00:21:46.150
And what they've found suggested was maybe it was from their older brothers.

00:21:47.670 --> 00:21:51.830
So our cells are going into our mother.

00:21:52.070 --> 00:21:52.710
Oh wow.

00:21:52.950 --> 00:21:53.270
Right?

00:21:53.510 --> 00:21:54.150
Yeah.

00:21:54.790 --> 00:21:59.110
And so the older sibs could actually be seated with.

00:22:00.740 --> 00:22:01.140
yes.

00:22:01.380 --> 00:22:01.940
Wow.

00:22:02.340 --> 00:22:07.780
So there's the the the tr the family tree gets very

00:22:08.980 --> 00:22:11.780
the very big, yeah, very big after that.

00:22:11.940 --> 00:22:12.740
So Yeah.

00:22:12.980 --> 00:22:16.260
And and have we gotten to microchimerism yet?

00:22:16.340 --> 00:22:17.620
Or are we still walking to that?

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.

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?

00:22:27.060 --> 00:22:29.220
Is that an example of microchimerism?

00:22:29.630 --> 00:22:30.510
It is, yes.

00:22:30.670 --> 00:22:30.830
Okay.

00:22:31.310 --> 00:22:31.870
Yes.

00:22:32.030 --> 00:22:36.590
Um, we're still working on the definition definition of it because some people would argue

00:22:36.750 --> 00:22:40.830
just because you can detect a gene doesn't mean it's a cell.

00:22:41.070 --> 00:22:46.030
It could just again be a byproduct of a cell, where is it coming from?

00:22:46.350 --> 00:22:50.030
Is is microchimerism does it have to be an attack cell?

00:22:50.190 --> 00:22:51.550
Does it have to persist?

00:22:51.710 --> 00:22:57.580
Does it have to do things where we're actually struggling, not struggling, but debating

00:22:57.580 --> 00:23:00.140
as a community what the actual definition is.

00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:06.060
But yeah, what we're getting to is microchimerism is a small amount, small

00:23:06.060 --> 00:23:11.660
micro of chimeric that's different, different genome within you.

00:23:12.140 --> 00:23:16.940
And we are all microchimeric because we're all mammals.

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

00:23:22.870 --> 00:23:23.670
one of our favorite movies.

00:23:23.830 --> 00:23:23.990
Yes.

00:23:24.230 --> 00:23:29.190
Um obviously everybody knows that like genes code for proteins that builds the animals or

00:23:29.190 --> 00:23:31.190
organisms, din dinosaurs, for example.

00:23:31.350 --> 00:23:37.190
Um, but um but why is that significant that the genes are there?

00:23:37.840 --> 00:23:40.480
like because you could just imagine, well, yeah, the genes are there.

00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:44.880
Like the null hypothesis is sort of like, well, yeah, there's like leakage of cells.

00:23:45.040 --> 00:23:45.600
Who cares?

00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:46.160
Right.

00:23:46.320 --> 00:23:47.280
Like it's yeah.

00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:49.440
So yes.

00:23:49.600 --> 00:23:53.360
Uh I think it's really, yeah, it's important for a few different reasons.

00:23:53.520 --> 00:23:58.480
One, um, the genes are there and the immune system is not getting rid of them.

00:23:58.790 --> 00:23:59.270
Why?

00:23:59.590 --> 00:23:59.830
Right.

00:23:59.990 --> 00:24:02.470
Oh, because we've learned self, non-self.

00:24:02.710 --> 00:24:04.950
You like that's immunology 101.

00:24:05.030 --> 00:24:09.910
Anything that that's why we can't have these large-scale organ transplants that from

00:24:09.910 --> 00:24:10.870
anyone, right?

00:24:11.270 --> 00:24:15.270
Um, even if it's from a sibling, you still have issues, right?

00:24:15.350 --> 00:24:16.790
You have to have immunosuppression.

00:24:16.870 --> 00:24:20.070
So why is the immune system fine with this?

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

00:24:25.860 --> 00:24:26.900
fine with this.

00:24:27.780 --> 00:24:32.900
So women, excuse me, are at a higher risk of developing autoimmune

00:24:32.900 --> 00:24:33.940
diseases.

00:24:35.220 --> 00:24:41.140
And some of the idea is that it could be these paternal genes

00:24:41.300 --> 00:24:46.900
expressed through these baby cells that are triggering an immune response.

00:24:48.050 --> 00:24:48.690
Wow.

00:24:49.810 --> 00:24:50.610
That's fascinating.

00:24:50.770 --> 00:24:56.530
I mean, so that that would predict a higher prevalence of autoimmune

00:24:56.530 --> 00:25:00.770
diseases among women who have uh microchimerism.

00:25:00.850 --> 00:25:03.090
So have, say, Y chromosomes that can be detected.

00:25:03.330 --> 00:25:03.490
Yes.

00:25:03.650 --> 00:25:06.370
Um is that, I mean, uh has that prediction been tested?

00:25:07.410 --> 00:25:09.570
It's been looked at uh often.

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,

00:25:15.800 --> 00:25:16.040
right?

00:25:16.120 --> 00:25:18.840
And so you could just have a genetic predisposition.

00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:24.360
We know individuals that develop autoimmune diseases in their early ages before pregnancy.

00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:26.520
There's men that develop autoimmune diseases.

00:25:26.600 --> 00:25:30.920
Like this is this is not the answer to autoimmune diseases.

00:25:31.080 --> 00:25:36.600
But along with the genetic predisposition, there are a few papers showing

00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:41.730
that yes, but it matters on your genetic makeup.

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,

00:25:48.130 --> 00:25:48.450
right?

00:25:48.850 --> 00:25:54.370
And then you have to be exposed to a certain paternal allele.

00:25:54.530 --> 00:25:58.770
Not all per paternal alleles, but certain ones can trigger that reaction.

00:25:58.930 --> 00:26:03.410
So it's like the perfect match to create the autoimmune disease.

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

00:26:10.060 --> 00:26:12.060
trigger the reaction.

00:26:14.540 --> 00:26:15.980
Fascinating stuff.

00:26:16.220 --> 00:26:21.020
Um so we've gotten to maternal fetal conflict, we've gotten to

00:26:21.020 --> 00:26:22.780
microchimerism.

00:26:23.020 --> 00:26:23.420
Yes.

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

00:26:28.950 --> 00:26:31.510
cancer and the evolution of cancer.

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

00:26:37.430 --> 00:26:41.270
vulnerable to pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

00:26:41.590 --> 00:26:45.900
Um, because the bacteria and viruses, they win in some sense.

00:26:46.060 --> 00:26:48.700
Like they're evolving to invade us and exploit us.

00:26:48.860 --> 00:26:51.420
Um, whereas with their tool, we're their food.

00:26:51.500 --> 00:26:51.660
Yeah.

00:26:52.060 --> 00:26:52.780
They want to eat us.

00:26:53.340 --> 00:26:54.940
They want to eat us and have babies.

00:26:55.020 --> 00:26:55.820
That's their goal.

00:26:56.380 --> 00:26:56.780
Totally.

00:26:56.940 --> 00:26:58.620
Uh yeah, and we're just at odds.

00:26:58.780 --> 00:27:01.180
Um so that I can wrap my head around.

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

00:27:05.660 --> 00:27:08.140
because those are my cells and they're hurting me.

00:27:08.300 --> 00:27:09.660
What are they why are they doing that?

00:27:09.820 --> 00:27:12.700
And how why hasn't evolution gotten rid of that?

00:27:14.150 --> 00:27:15.510
I love this question.

00:27:15.750 --> 00:27:17.030
Um okay.

00:27:17.430 --> 00:27:20.390
Um we we have a few answers for you.

00:27:20.550 --> 00:27:25.750
Um one is we cells had to suppress their

00:27:26.070 --> 00:27:29.910
own interest to become a multicellular body, right?

00:27:30.230 --> 00:27:34.150
We used to be single-celled organisms that could just multiply.

00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:38.480
We started having to cooperate once we became a multicellular body.

00:27:38.560 --> 00:27:44.560
And you suppress your cellular fitness for the multicellular fitness, right?

00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:46.080
That's crazy.

00:27:46.400 --> 00:27:47.040
It's so cool.

00:27:47.120 --> 00:27:47.680
It's such a weird.

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,

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

00:27:59.490 --> 00:28:00.370
personal experience.

00:28:00.690 --> 00:28:02.530
That would that is tautological, right?

00:28:02.610 --> 00:28:03.650
But no, that's amazing.

00:28:04.050 --> 00:28:04.450
Yes, exactly.

00:28:04.770 --> 00:28:04.930
Yes.

00:28:05.410 --> 00:28:11.090
And and we have conservation of genes that have persisted since we were

00:28:11.090 --> 00:28:12.450
single-cell organisms.

00:28:12.690 --> 00:28:14.850
And so some of that is still in there, right?

00:28:15.490 --> 00:28:17.970
And so we have these multicellular organisms.

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

00:28:22.930 --> 00:28:25.970
competing for mates and resources and all this stuff.

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?

00:28:32.700 --> 00:28:35.580
And cancer is a disease of cells.

00:28:35.820 --> 00:28:36.140
Okay.

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

00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:48.460
they're proliferating, mutating, and causing mutations that knock out their

00:28:48.750 --> 00:28:50.990
basically cooperative behaviors.

00:28:51.230 --> 00:28:53.230
And they become selfish again.

00:28:53.550 --> 00:28:55.470
And they start dividing.

00:28:55.710 --> 00:29:01.150
And then there's a different selection going on there where they're now

00:29:02.030 --> 00:29:07.310
dividing for their own self-interest instead of the interest of the

00:29:07.310 --> 00:29:09.150
multicellular organism.

00:29:10.340 --> 00:29:11.940
And that oh go ahead.

00:29:12.260 --> 00:29:12.740
Oh, sorry.

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.

00:29:18.580 --> 00:29:23.380
There's selection for growth and survival and reproduction.

00:29:23.460 --> 00:29:28.500
And we see these genes that are important for cancer are sometimes important for

00:29:28.500 --> 00:29:30.500
implantation and fertilization.

00:29:30.580 --> 00:29:35.390
And so they're getting selected early and then they get turned back on later on.

00:29:35.950 --> 00:29:36.430
Wow.

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

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

00:29:47.630 --> 00:29:52.590
but impose a fitness cost later in life will be selected for in an organism.

00:29:52.670 --> 00:29:58.640
And insofar as those genes accumulate over time, uh the genome will accumulate uh features

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

00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:10.400
gets past reproduction and and the the further away from the window of selection that that

00:30:10.560 --> 00:30:12.880
um evolution will be focusing on.

00:30:13.120 --> 00:30:16.480
Um I I always found that theory of aging really fascinating.

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

00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:24.850
gestation or implantation early in life actually increase cancer risk later in life.

00:30:24.930 --> 00:30:29.330
And this would actually be an example of Medouarin aging.

00:30:29.890 --> 00:30:31.250
Yeah, and it is that.

00:30:31.330 --> 00:30:36.850
And what we see, and it's a little nuanced now because I think there the

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

00:30:42.290 --> 00:30:46.690
as smoking and you know, various other things, being out in the sun too much.

00:30:47.250 --> 00:30:50.210
But in general, cancer is a disease of aging.

00:30:50.960 --> 00:30:56.800
It is, if you look across many different populations, it's an old age disease,

00:30:56.960 --> 00:30:57.200
right?

00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:03.040
And it's after basically those soma and and the mutations have

00:31:03.040 --> 00:31:04.080
accumulated.

00:31:04.160 --> 00:31:05.440
Um, but that's not it.

00:31:05.520 --> 00:31:10.560
It's not just mutation accumulation, because there's been some really great studies that

00:31:10.560 --> 00:31:16.400
look at like normal healthy tissue, and they have like the mutation profile of

00:31:16.400 --> 00:31:17.280
a cancer.

00:31:18.110 --> 00:31:23.870
And so along with the mutations, there's a breakdown in the body as we age,

00:31:24.030 --> 00:31:24.350
right?

00:31:24.590 --> 00:31:27.230
And so suddenly our immune system isn't working as well.

00:31:27.310 --> 00:31:29.310
Our immune system can clean it all out.

00:31:30.270 --> 00:31:32.110
The tissue fitness matters.

00:31:32.190 --> 00:31:35.390
And so suddenly the cancer cells have a competitive edge.

00:31:35.710 --> 00:31:39.790
Right now, when the cancer cells are in a multicellular body of a really healthy

00:31:39.790 --> 00:31:45.380
individual, and I say healthy, but a a young individual that has, you know, good luck

00:31:45.540 --> 00:31:50.180
too, um, the neighboring cells actually can suppress it.

00:31:50.740 --> 00:31:56.260
But suddenly the neighboring cells get older as well, and the tissue fitness landscape

00:31:56.260 --> 00:31:56.820
changes.

00:31:56.900 --> 00:32:02.810
And that's when cancer cells suddenly have a competitive edge and kind of outcompete the

00:32:02.970 --> 00:32:05.930
the the healthy non-cancerous tissue.

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

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

00:32:15.930 --> 00:32:18.490
like diseases of old age are diseases of sedentism.

00:32:18.570 --> 00:32:22.890
Like, you know, and if you look at populations that are more active all sequel.

00:32:23.130 --> 00:32:24.010
Is that true?

00:32:24.570 --> 00:32:26.010
Yeah, it's true with cancer too.

00:32:26.090 --> 00:32:26.730
It's not everything.

00:32:26.890 --> 00:32:28.780
Cancer is like genetics.

00:32:28.940 --> 00:32:32.940
You can have underlying genetics that just predispose you to it.

00:32:33.180 --> 00:32:34.220
Bad luck.

00:32:34.380 --> 00:32:36.540
But there's a lot of bad luck in cancer.

00:32:36.780 --> 00:32:41.100
And it's just you just like our our genomes, we got three billion base pairs.

00:32:41.260 --> 00:32:45.180
What mutations that land in an important cancer suppression gene?

00:32:45.340 --> 00:32:45.500
Yeah.

00:32:45.820 --> 00:32:47.500
Sometimes just bad luck, right?

00:32:48.140 --> 00:32:51.170
Um, and then the other component is lifestyle.

00:32:51.330 --> 00:32:57.010
And so they do see yes, exercise is a huge impact on

00:32:57.010 --> 00:32:59.490
being protective against against cancer.

00:32:59.810 --> 00:33:05.090
And presumably that's like the the immune system and maybe health of cells sort of

00:33:05.970 --> 00:33:09.410
if to again gloss a lot, but that's sort of gloss a lot.

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

00:33:14.530 --> 00:33:19.960
it's a acute inflammatory, it pulls in some

00:33:20.120 --> 00:33:22.760
anti-inflammatory mechanisms afterwards.

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

00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:30.600
the things that are trying to eat us, the bacteria and the viruses.

00:33:31.000 --> 00:33:36.040
But when it creates too much chaos, it also promotes these

00:33:36.600 --> 00:33:41.370
cells to survive and thrive in in a cancer rich environment.

00:33:41.690 --> 00:33:41.850
Yeah.

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

00:33:46.330 --> 00:33:48.250
sounds like a lot like the immune system is important.

00:33:48.330 --> 00:33:50.250
Like you talked about the immune system.

00:33:50.730 --> 00:33:56.570
So clearly like the immune system, there's been selection to keep these microchimeric cells

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

00:34:02.410 --> 00:34:02.570
them.

00:34:02.800 --> 00:34:03.120
Yes.

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?

00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:08.080
I have an answer for that.

00:34:09.600 --> 00:34:10.560
It's my new project.

00:34:10.720 --> 00:34:11.200
No cool.

00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:12.960
I think, yes.

00:34:13.120 --> 00:34:14.720
So we looked at cancer.

00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:17.200
Um, I'm gonna take the long way there though.

00:34:17.520 --> 00:34:22.400
Um so we looked at when cancer arose across a tree of life.

00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:28.400
And so we see with most multicellular organisms, there's at least some evidence that they

00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:31.950
can get cancer or cancer-like properties, okay?

00:34:32.110 --> 00:34:33.150
Even plants.

00:34:33.390 --> 00:34:38.910
While plants don't have a vascular system like we do, so it's not so

00:34:39.070 --> 00:34:40.030
impactful.

00:34:40.190 --> 00:34:46.030
Um, but once we get into maybe vertebrates or even you know, mammals, we

00:34:46.030 --> 00:34:49.150
see cancer that is prevalent across the tree.

00:34:49.230 --> 00:34:54.510
It's ubiquitous across many different animals, but the rates vary,

00:34:55.160 --> 00:34:55.640
Right.

00:34:55.800 --> 00:35:01.400
And so I would argue that most organisms are not completely cancer resistant,

00:35:01.640 --> 00:35:06.120
but some are actually really good at not getting cancer better than humans.

00:35:06.440 --> 00:35:06.920
Right.

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

00:35:13.720 --> 00:35:19.450
get more cancer than other groups when we compare them to birds and

00:35:19.450 --> 00:35:22.570
lizards and various other organisms.

00:35:22.970 --> 00:35:28.010
And so what is it about mammals that makes us so different?

00:35:28.650 --> 00:35:34.570
Some of it is one where, you know, we have to internally gestate

00:35:34.650 --> 00:35:40.490
and we have placentas and placentas look very much like cancer in some sense

00:35:40.570 --> 00:35:45.610
because they invade and they recruit blood vessels and they

00:35:46.460 --> 00:35:49.340
do growth in the body.

00:35:49.420 --> 00:35:55.180
And so is it that because we're placental mammals, we

00:35:55.500 --> 00:35:57.980
also have this blind spot?

00:35:58.140 --> 00:36:03.500
And so one of the ideas is potentially, yes, maybe our immune system

00:36:03.820 --> 00:36:09.020
cannot be as robust as we'd like it to be,

00:36:09.830 --> 00:36:15.670
because we have to be able to recognize and be okay with different

00:36:15.670 --> 00:36:17.430
genomes being in our body.

00:36:18.630 --> 00:36:19.590
Amazing.

00:36:20.790 --> 00:36:22.390
That's just what I think though, by the way.

00:36:22.710 --> 00:36:24.870
No, that's it's not.

00:36:25.110 --> 00:36:28.230
I don't know if that's like a community wide consensus.

00:36:28.550 --> 00:36:29.910
That's a fascinating hypothesis.

00:36:30.020 --> 00:36:30.260
Yeah.

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

00:36:34.500 --> 00:36:39.300
like like dogs, like certain dogs get like like labs get really high rates of cancer.

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

00:36:45.780 --> 00:36:46.020
too.

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

00:36:51.670 --> 00:36:53.510
developmental things too.

00:36:53.590 --> 00:36:57.990
So like the immune system has this issue of like, is this a developing offspring?

00:36:58.230 --> 00:37:01.590
Is this my development, or is it cancer?

00:37:01.750 --> 00:37:03.750
That's a hard problem, right?

00:37:03.990 --> 00:37:04.230
Yes.

00:37:04.470 --> 00:37:05.350
To tease it.

00:37:05.430 --> 00:37:05.670
Yes.

00:37:05.830 --> 00:37:06.070
Yeah.

00:37:06.390 --> 00:37:06.710
Yes.

00:37:06.790 --> 00:37:07.110
Yes.

00:37:07.270 --> 00:37:09.350
Um no and dogs do get more cancer.

00:37:09.430 --> 00:37:10.310
They're domesticated.

00:37:10.470 --> 00:37:12.550
We think a lot of it has to do with like inbreeding.

00:37:12.630 --> 00:37:14.470
So a lot of the domesticated species.

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

00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:26.160
you know predisposition for disease in general um other species that get a lot of cancer

00:37:26.160 --> 00:37:31.760
are like ferrets and hamsters we think there is we have this like life history perspective

00:37:31.760 --> 00:37:36.960
when we're studying cancer where we think like these fast life history strategies that just

00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:42.590
go reproduce live shortly you will not evolve defenses against

00:37:42.590 --> 00:37:44.430
cancer because you're not living long enough.

00:37:44.510 --> 00:37:46.830
You're going to get, you know, eaten by a hawk, right?

00:37:47.070 --> 00:37:47.390
Right.

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

00:37:52.190 --> 00:37:54.990
whales that grow really big and slowly.

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

00:38:00.910 --> 00:38:02.350
cancer defense, right?

00:38:02.430 --> 00:38:07.760
Like making sure you're dividing your cells carefully, there's no mutations, you have in

00:38:08.080 --> 00:38:13.840
you know enhanced immune activity and various things to prune cancer like cells from

00:38:14.080 --> 00:38:14.240
them.

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

00:38:21.120 --> 00:38:26.800
the genetics of offspring, you know, what consequences other than the

00:38:26.800 --> 00:38:28.560
immune system lets them exist?

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.

00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:38.670
What what do we know of like what consequence they're having on the on the

00:38:38.670 --> 00:38:40.910
mother or on us, you know?

00:38:41.070 --> 00:38:42.670
Like do we know?

00:38:43.230 --> 00:38:44.990
Uh yeah, we don't know.

00:38:45.070 --> 00:38:46.910
Um there's a few papers.

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

00:38:52.750 --> 00:38:56.910
very distinct topics, but we're yeah, no, it seems like uh it's all related.

00:38:57.390 --> 00:38:58.110
They relate.

00:38:59.150 --> 00:39:04.940
So um yeah, the the fetal cell, there's some really great studies to show the

00:39:04.940 --> 00:39:10.620
mother is sending cells to the baby that are c clearly important for immune education.

00:39:11.180 --> 00:39:15.660
There's, you know, passive immunity through antibodies being sent to the baby, right?

00:39:15.820 --> 00:39:20.300
That are really important for survival, especially if it's like an infection that's

00:39:20.300 --> 00:39:22.220
happening in real time, right?

00:39:22.460 --> 00:39:25.660
But also immune cells are going to the baby as well.

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

00:39:30.370 --> 00:39:35.090
mom has already had this lifetime experience of exposure and is now passing cells on.

00:39:35.410 --> 00:39:38.210
And then is that through placenta and breast milk?

00:39:38.530 --> 00:39:38.850
Yes.

00:39:39.090 --> 00:39:39.410
Okay.

00:39:39.890 --> 00:39:40.290
Nice.

00:39:40.850 --> 00:39:41.090
Yes.

00:39:41.330 --> 00:39:45.090
It goes through the placenta and then again through through the breast milk.

00:39:45.170 --> 00:39:47.330
Um, there's maternal cells being passed on.

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.

00:39:51.480 --> 00:39:51.720
Right.

00:39:51.880 --> 00:39:56.680
What the heck could they be doing that could actually impact the mother's survival and

00:39:56.680 --> 00:39:58.040
reproductive success?

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

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

00:40:09.960 --> 00:40:14.790
that these cells can track to sites of injury and help repair it.

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

00:40:20.550 --> 00:40:24.390
scars and they were able to find baby cells, fetal cells there.

00:40:24.550 --> 00:40:29.110
And they were like expressing collagen, which is really important for you know healing the

00:40:29.110 --> 00:40:29.830
C-section.

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

00:40:36.070 --> 00:40:36.390
know.

00:40:36.790 --> 00:40:42.480
Um, and there's one paper out looking again, broad broad scale at like

00:40:42.480 --> 00:40:44.240
male origin microchimerism.

00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:50.080
So not even like being specific about the baby, but just looking at Y chromosome in

00:40:50.240 --> 00:40:50.640
women.

00:40:50.800 --> 00:40:56.720
And they found women decades later that tested positive for male origin

00:40:56.880 --> 00:40:58.880
microchimerism lived longer.

00:40:59.200 --> 00:40:59.840
Wow.

00:41:00.240 --> 00:41:03.120
So there could be some potential benefits.

00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:08.810
And we don't know, we don't know why some women we can detect these

00:41:08.810 --> 00:41:13.850
cells in them and other times we cannot detect any cells after they've given birth.

00:41:14.090 --> 00:41:19.690
I think it's more our method method methodology of not being able to detect rare

00:41:19.690 --> 00:41:21.850
cells than them not being there.

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

00:41:26.650 --> 00:41:32.490
this is very much this uh science is very much dependent on genetic sequencing being

00:41:32.490 --> 00:41:35.780
faster and cheaper or How how old is this?

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

00:41:40.340 --> 00:41:46.100
where the change in technology has allowed this research area to proliferate such that it's

00:41:46.100 --> 00:41:49.700
now feasible to do this at scale?

00:41:49.940 --> 00:41:50.100
Yeah.

00:41:50.580 --> 00:41:51.540
Yeah, absolutely.

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

00:41:56.420 --> 00:41:57.220
coming over.

00:41:57.620 --> 00:42:02.820
Everyone just thought it again was a byproduct of this spillover effect, right?

00:42:03.060 --> 00:42:06.290
Of of being a deeply invasive placenta.

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

00:42:11.090 --> 00:42:13.090
no, these cells stay around.

00:42:13.330 --> 00:42:14.930
And that like had a mind shift.

00:42:15.170 --> 00:42:17.810
Suddenly, evolutionary biologists were interested in it too.

00:42:17.970 --> 00:42:21.410
Like, wait, like these cells are persisting.

00:42:21.810 --> 00:42:23.650
Do they have a function?

00:42:23.970 --> 00:42:28.380
And is it a function that's important for that body actually?

00:42:28.620 --> 00:42:30.540
Do we and have we co-evolved it?

00:42:30.700 --> 00:42:35.900
So we expect that right um relationship to to happen.

00:42:36.140 --> 00:42:41.820
So and then if uh if I can have my mother's um

00:42:42.060 --> 00:42:44.780
cells in me, can I have my grandmother's cells in me?

00:42:44.940 --> 00:42:45.260
Yes.

00:42:45.500 --> 00:42:49.710
We think so there's one paper that has shown it, right?

00:42:50.110 --> 00:42:52.750
But of course there's this route, you know.

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.

00:42:58.510 --> 00:43:00.990
So we think that that's possible.

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

00:43:06.910 --> 00:43:08.910
jumping generation to generation.

00:43:09.070 --> 00:43:09.390
Yeah.

00:43:09.630 --> 00:43:10.190
Right.

00:43:10.430 --> 00:43:14.670
Um and it can go on for potentially a really long time.

00:43:14.990 --> 00:43:15.310
Yeah.

00:43:15.440 --> 00:43:15.760
Yeah.

00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:17.840
It's sort of beautiful in a way, right?

00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:18.880
It's it's yeah.

00:43:19.040 --> 00:43:22.160
I I to to be slightly like uh poetic about it.

00:43:22.240 --> 00:43:23.680
But yeah, there's something cool about that.

00:43:23.760 --> 00:43:24.000
Yeah.

00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:24.320
Yeah.

00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:24.640
Yeah.

00:43:25.200 --> 00:43:30.400
You literally have a you know bits of your your grandma in you, potentially like Yes.

00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:34.800
I know and and then you hear things like, Oh, she looks a lot like grandma.

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.

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

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

00:43:49.230 --> 00:43:54.830
like be a part of the germline or insert really early into development um

00:43:55.150 --> 00:44:01.150
and yeah have you know more of a chimerism effect than

00:44:01.150 --> 00:44:02.910
a microchimerism effect.

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,

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

00:44:14.120 --> 00:44:15.320
bits of my grandma in me.

00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:18.680
Like it's just so much messier than than I would think.

00:44:18.760 --> 00:44:19.080
I don't know.

00:44:19.160 --> 00:44:22.680
It's it's yeah, horizontal transmission really screws me up too.

00:44:22.840 --> 00:44:25.880
Like if we if when you add that in, you're like, oh my god.

00:44:25.960 --> 00:44:26.120
Yeah.

00:44:28.370 --> 00:44:30.850
this might seem like a dumb question, but I'm curious.

00:44:31.010 --> 00:44:36.530
Um would you expect differences between mammals and marsupial mammals where the

00:44:36.530 --> 00:44:38.770
gestation isn't quite as internal?

00:44:39.170 --> 00:44:44.770
Uh would you expect, say, less microchimerism, less autoimmune diseases, perhaps less

00:44:44.770 --> 00:44:45.410
cancer?

00:44:46.930 --> 00:44:48.370
This is a great question.

00:44:48.530 --> 00:44:50.610
Um we we're trying to look at that.

00:44:50.690 --> 00:44:54.210
Um we don't know if there's microchimerism in marsupials.

00:44:54.370 --> 00:44:55.490
I think there is.

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

00:45:00.520 --> 00:45:01.720
chance to look at it.

00:45:01.960 --> 00:45:04.520
Um, but but potentially.

00:45:04.680 --> 00:45:10.520
Um, and then the other thing that is complicated is yeah, you could maybe

00:45:10.520 --> 00:45:14.120
suggest um less cancer.

00:45:14.360 --> 00:45:20.270
So there's marsupials that have a very um placenta-like structure

00:45:20.430 --> 00:45:23.230
that's really quick, and then they go to the pouch, right?

00:45:23.470 --> 00:45:29.470
And then across mammals, there's basically three different invasion types of placentas

00:45:29.710 --> 00:45:35.550
from a very um surface invasion to some kind of integration into

00:45:35.790 --> 00:45:37.550
a superinvasive placenta.

00:45:37.630 --> 00:45:42.640
And it's assumed that organisms that have the super invasive placenta have the most

00:45:42.640 --> 00:45:43.680
microchimerism.

00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:49.920
And there's also predictions that those organism or those organisms have the

00:45:49.920 --> 00:45:50.880
most cancer.

00:45:51.200 --> 00:45:52.960
Like there's a stepwise.

00:45:53.120 --> 00:45:57.440
The more invasive a placenta gets, the more cancer we should see.

00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:00.000
We do not see that in my data.

00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:00.480
No.

00:46:00.800 --> 00:46:02.160
It's like a really nice theory.

00:46:02.240 --> 00:46:04.480
It's in evolutionary medicine textbooks.

00:46:04.640 --> 00:46:06.240
It's much messier than that.

00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:12.310
And so with the marsupials, what we see is that um they

00:46:12.310 --> 00:46:17.990
could have went through some genetic bottlenecks and um actually

00:46:18.390 --> 00:46:24.230
um some of them get a lot of cancer but it might have nothing to do

00:46:24.230 --> 00:46:29.430
with their relationship with the placenta it could be just other factors

00:46:29.940 --> 00:46:32.820
And actually, um, the Tasmanian Devils.

00:46:32.980 --> 00:46:35.060
Have you heard of the Tasmanian Devils?

00:46:35.300 --> 00:46:38.420
Well, I've seen Looney Tunes, so yes, I'm totally familiar with it.

00:46:38.900 --> 00:46:39.300
Yes.

00:46:39.620 --> 00:46:45.540
These these creatures actually, they're

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

00:46:50.820 --> 00:46:53.860
little crazy in that in their they're very bitey creatures.

00:46:55.060 --> 00:46:58.900
And they have developed a transmissible cancer.

00:46:59.330 --> 00:46:59.890
Whoa.

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

00:47:06.290 --> 00:47:09.410
years ago, um, and it still persists.

00:47:09.490 --> 00:47:14.930
And they just transfer cells, not a virus, cancer cells from an

00:47:15.250 --> 00:47:17.570
individual that is no longer alive.

00:47:17.810 --> 00:47:18.450
Whoa.

00:47:18.770 --> 00:47:22.920
And it's pretty uh detrimental to the Tasmanian doubles.

00:47:23.160 --> 00:47:25.720
They may go extinct because of this.

00:47:26.120 --> 00:47:32.120
Um not only once has this evolved, but now there's a

00:47:32.120 --> 00:47:35.960
second strain of transmissible cancer.

00:47:36.120 --> 00:47:41.400
So again, it's cancer cells that are hopping from host to host to host.

00:47:41.720 --> 00:47:41.880
Wow.

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

00:47:47.800 --> 00:47:51.070
their organism, it's not it has not crossed species.

00:47:51.150 --> 00:47:54.830
There's transmissible cancers in bivalves too, like muscles.

00:47:54.990 --> 00:47:55.790
Oh wow.

00:47:56.110 --> 00:47:58.030
And those have crossed species.

00:47:58.350 --> 00:47:58.750
Wow.

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

00:48:04.750 --> 00:48:05.070
right?

00:48:05.550 --> 00:48:05.870
Yes.

00:48:06.190 --> 00:48:08.110
Gets spread from the Tasmanian devil.

00:48:08.430 --> 00:48:10.030
Well, you have to be bitey, right?

00:48:10.110 --> 00:48:14.030
Like we've talked a lot about like why don't we have contagious cancer, right?

00:48:14.430 --> 00:48:19.400
And there dogs have uh contagious cancer as well, and it's sexually transmitted.

00:48:19.880 --> 00:48:22.120
Um, and it's treatable.

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

00:48:27.720 --> 00:48:28.280
persist.

00:48:28.440 --> 00:48:30.280
Yeah, it's really mind blowing.

00:48:30.520 --> 00:48:36.200
Um, but um yeah, the the routes to transmission, if you

00:48:36.200 --> 00:48:42.170
wanted to pass cancer cells back and forth, you need to either be bitey or

00:48:42.170 --> 00:48:45.530
it has to be a sexually transmitted type of thing, right?

00:48:45.770 --> 00:48:46.090
Right.

00:48:46.250 --> 00:48:48.570
Um so is the clam biting people?

00:48:48.890 --> 00:48:52.730
No, but well here's the other thing that or you live in the ocean.

00:48:53.050 --> 00:48:53.930
Uh right, of course.

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

00:48:59.210 --> 00:48:59.690
environment.

00:48:59.850 --> 00:49:00.810
Land, land animal.

00:49:01.210 --> 00:49:01.850
Oh yeah, that's true.

00:49:01.930 --> 00:49:04.650
Cause I always think about like you know, vectors, like mosquitoes.

00:49:04.810 --> 00:49:06.730
But yeah, the ocean is like a whole vector.

00:49:07.050 --> 00:49:07.930
It's a whole thing.

00:49:08.010 --> 00:49:09.530
It's a whole another world.

00:49:09.690 --> 00:49:10.170
Yes.

00:49:11.120 --> 00:49:11.440
That's true.

00:49:12.640 --> 00:49:16.000
Truly wild and bizarre this contagious face cancer business.

00:49:16.240 --> 00:49:20.480
Um it's like put that on a t shirt or something.

00:49:20.720 --> 00:49:21.760
It's very weird, yeah.

00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:22.080
Yes.

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

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

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

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

00:49:41.230 --> 00:49:41.710
the body.

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.

00:49:46.590 --> 00:49:50.110
But once it gets into someone else's body, particularly someone else who's young and

00:49:50.110 --> 00:49:51.870
healthy, then it's a whole different ballgame.

00:49:51.950 --> 00:49:55.550
And so how how does the cancer survive once it gets to someone else's body?

00:49:55.870 --> 00:49:56.190
Yeah.

00:49:56.430 --> 00:49:56.750
Yeah.

00:49:56.830 --> 00:50:00.990
So there's been studies looking at humans, and there's only been a few cases.

00:50:01.150 --> 00:50:03.480
One is transferring through pregnancy.

00:50:03.640 --> 00:50:06.840
Unfortunately, cancers can metastasize.

00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:11.000
Um, but other than that, we're pretty good at saying, no, that is not me.

00:50:11.160 --> 00:50:15.640
Um, I, you know, I reject it, the immune system rejects it.

00:50:15.800 --> 00:50:21.800
When it comes to the Tasmanian devils, um, and sorry, I'm I didn't complete

00:50:21.800 --> 00:50:24.840
the the the full story because we talked about genetic bottlenecks.

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.590
Seems like the Tasmanian devils went through a genetic bottleneck and they have reduction

00:50:29.590 --> 00:50:33.510
of their MHC receptors, their self non-self receptors.

00:50:33.910 --> 00:50:39.830
And that reduced genetic diversity has allowed them to not be able to

00:50:39.830 --> 00:50:44.070
recognize that as non-self as much as it should.

00:50:44.310 --> 00:50:50.310
Um so unfortunately that was the it was like a combination, the perfect storm for the

00:50:50.310 --> 00:50:51.990
test, as you said.

00:50:52.070 --> 00:50:56.070
Like it's just this example of just a species level bad luck, basically.

00:50:56.390 --> 00:50:56.790
Exactly.

00:50:56.950 --> 00:50:57.190
Yeah.

00:50:57.350 --> 00:50:57.750
Yeah.

00:50:57.920 --> 00:50:58.240
Yeah.

00:50:58.480 --> 00:50:58.880
Wow.

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

00:51:03.600 --> 00:51:06.960
are sloshing around, everything's messy all over the place.

00:51:08.720 --> 00:51:10.160
And somehow we survive.

00:51:10.480 --> 00:51:10.720
I know.

00:51:10.800 --> 00:51:10.960
Yeah.

00:51:11.120 --> 00:51:13.280
No, again, as a mach as a multicellular organism.

00:51:13.520 --> 00:51:15.600
And we live for a really long time too.

00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:17.120
Yeah, no, it's a miracle.

00:51:17.280 --> 00:51:17.920
It's amazing.

00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:19.520
All this anything works at all.

00:51:19.680 --> 00:51:21.040
It's really Yes.

00:51:21.360 --> 00:51:24.800
When you um uh you mentioned evolutionary medicine.

00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:26.480
We haven't really talked about that.

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

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

00:51:39.370 --> 00:51:39.530
you.

00:51:39.690 --> 00:51:41.450
You're the expert in evolutionary medicine.

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

00:51:45.850 --> 00:51:47.770
research, and then people maybe doing medicine.

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

00:51:52.300 --> 00:51:52.860
know enough.

00:51:53.980 --> 00:51:54.540
Yes.

00:51:54.860 --> 00:51:55.900
For it's so funny.

00:51:56.140 --> 00:51:57.580
So I teach evolutionary medicine.

00:51:57.660 --> 00:51:59.820
I'm teaching it right now at UCSB.

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

00:52:04.940 --> 00:52:05.980
know what the class is.

00:52:06.140 --> 00:52:06.780
Yeah.

00:52:07.260 --> 00:52:10.620
And I always ask them what they think evolutionary medicine is.

00:52:10.940 --> 00:52:15.020
And it says how evolution evolved over you know time.

00:52:15.190 --> 00:52:20.230
and it that's not what evolutionary medicine is how medicine changed over time yeah how

00:52:20.230 --> 00:52:25.350
medicine changed over time um but evolutionary medicine um

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

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

00:52:37.910 --> 00:52:43.200
this protein this gene this you know factor the you know, proximate

00:52:43.200 --> 00:52:45.520
mechanisms of the disease.

00:52:45.680 --> 00:52:50.800
And then evolutionary medicine takes a step back and says, well, why are we vulnerable in

00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:51.680
the first place?

00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:54.080
Why are we vulnerable to cancer?

00:52:54.240 --> 00:52:58.400
Why are we, you know, vulnerable to these specific diseases?

00:52:58.640 --> 00:53:01.440
What is it in our evolutionary history or past?

00:53:01.680 --> 00:53:02.880
Are there trade-offs?

00:53:03.040 --> 00:53:06.800
Are there constraints that we're vulnerable for this sickness?

00:53:07.410 --> 00:53:10.530
And I think it's a really powerful way to view diseases.

00:53:10.770 --> 00:53:16.610
Some have argued that maybe it doesn't have such a practical impact sometimes,

00:53:16.690 --> 00:53:19.730
where it's like, oh, cool, it's because we're multicellular.

00:53:20.130 --> 00:53:21.410
Like, what now?

00:53:21.650 --> 00:53:21.890
Right.

00:53:22.290 --> 00:53:24.050
In terms of cancer.

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

00:53:30.040 --> 00:53:35.640
like, oh, but other species that have also are multicellular get less

00:53:35.640 --> 00:53:36.840
cancer than humans.

00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:38.040
So what have they done?

00:53:38.120 --> 00:53:43.320
So we can take this comparative approach when we're looking deep in the phylogenies.

00:53:43.480 --> 00:53:48.760
But then also some really great ways evolutionary medicine is moving forward in like a

00:53:48.760 --> 00:53:54.280
clinical sense is trying to understand both antibiotic resistance and

00:53:54.530 --> 00:53:59.970
chemotherapy resistance because they're following principles of evolution, right?

00:54:00.210 --> 00:54:05.970
Bacteria, we provide a selective pressure, they respond, they evolve resistance.

00:54:06.130 --> 00:54:08.370
Same thing with cancer cells, actually.

00:54:08.530 --> 00:54:12.530
That that mass that's in your body can start evolving, right?

00:54:12.770 --> 00:54:15.970
It's operating on principles of natural selection.

00:54:16.370 --> 00:54:22.200
And um, when it comes to treatment, we could maybe harness these principles of

00:54:22.200 --> 00:54:26.920
evolution to do a better job at avoiding resistance.

00:54:27.160 --> 00:54:32.200
Because the problem with medicine such as antibiotics or

00:54:32.200 --> 00:54:36.680
chemotherapy, we hit a dead end when we hit resistance.

00:54:37.480 --> 00:54:41.400
And we don't have any more drugs to provide the patient, right?

00:54:41.560 --> 00:54:45.930
Um, so if we could avoid resistance, we might be better off.

00:54:46.010 --> 00:54:48.730
Um, and the patient might do better.

00:54:48.970 --> 00:54:54.970
And so there's such great work looking at how you steer um the

00:54:54.970 --> 00:55:00.890
evolution of a bacteria population or a cancer cell population to

00:55:00.890 --> 00:55:04.650
where you want it to go in terms of their evolutionary trajectory.

00:55:04.820 --> 00:55:06.340
And I think that is so cool.

00:55:06.900 --> 00:55:10.340
So like domesticating the Yes, exactly.

00:55:11.060 --> 00:55:11.380
Yes.

00:55:11.540 --> 00:55:15.540
And there's all these ecologists that have jumped in, especially in the like cancer world,

00:55:15.620 --> 00:55:19.220
where it's like, okay, here's a scenario that I see in ecology.

00:55:19.460 --> 00:55:25.220
So you have, you know, a rabbit, right, that's out in the the savannah

00:55:25.300 --> 00:55:26.900
and there's a hawk coming for it.

00:55:27.060 --> 00:55:27.380
Okay.

00:55:27.540 --> 00:55:28.900
And so the rabbit, what does it do?

00:55:29.060 --> 00:55:30.420
It darts under a bush.

00:55:30.580 --> 00:55:32.100
Where are all the snakes?

00:55:32.250 --> 00:55:33.610
are hiding in the bush?

00:55:33.850 --> 00:55:34.330
Right.

00:55:34.650 --> 00:55:37.690
How do we do that same principle for cancer?

00:55:37.850 --> 00:55:43.610
Like how can we switch the ecology to end up tricking

00:55:43.610 --> 00:55:46.090
them into their own demise, basically?

00:55:46.570 --> 00:55:47.610
So like so yeah.

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

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

00:55:56.170 --> 00:56:01.720
bacteria that feed on something, and you select for those

00:56:01.720 --> 00:56:07.480
bacteria that are really efficient at feeding on this thing, but then that thing that

00:56:07.480 --> 00:56:13.400
you've selected those bacteria for, then if in a generation later is the

00:56:13.400 --> 00:56:14.680
vehicle of drug delivery.

00:56:14.840 --> 00:56:19.480
So you've selected for the bacteria that are super good at uptaking this material.

00:56:20.040 --> 00:56:21.160
Let's give you all the resources.

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

00:56:25.640 --> 00:56:26.120
super well.

00:56:26.190 --> 00:56:26.430
Yeah.

00:56:26.670 --> 00:56:26.910
Yes.

00:56:27.070 --> 00:56:29.950
So there's these ideas circul circulating.

00:56:30.110 --> 00:56:35.550
Another one that's really prevalent um right now is actually let's give less drug.

00:56:36.910 --> 00:56:39.630
Let's not create resistance in the first place.

00:56:39.870 --> 00:56:44.990
Because what we realize, especially I'm gonna just gonna the same principles apply to both,

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

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

00:56:55.580 --> 00:56:55.900
drug.

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

00:57:01.580 --> 00:57:01.900
drug.

00:57:02.060 --> 00:57:05.420
Because in the cells that are resistant, we have this competitive release.

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.

00:57:09.820 --> 00:57:15.340
But what if you kept the resistant cells and the sensitive cells within the same

00:57:15.340 --> 00:57:18.890
tumor and they competed for resources.

00:57:20.730 --> 00:57:26.090
And what you did then was just knocked down the tumor smaller.

00:57:26.330 --> 00:57:26.890
Wow.

00:57:27.370 --> 00:57:30.330
Um but still had control over the tumor.

00:57:30.490 --> 00:57:30.570
Yeah.

00:57:30.650 --> 00:57:30.890
That's right.

00:57:31.130 --> 00:57:37.130
Like it's all about staying, but but that psychologically will have to change our our

00:57:37.130 --> 00:57:38.970
way of how we think about cancer.

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

00:57:45.080 --> 00:57:45.800
to get rid of everything.

00:57:46.120 --> 00:57:47.160
It's like a contamination.

00:57:47.480 --> 00:57:50.200
It's like it's like dirt and you've got to clean it out.

00:57:50.360 --> 00:57:53.160
It's like a very it's like a pathogen right.

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?

00:57:59.720 --> 00:58:01.400
Instead of this messy thing.

00:58:01.560 --> 00:58:06.760
And so once there is this idea that oh we can maybe treat cancer as

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

00:58:13.110 --> 00:58:13.830
disease.

00:58:14.070 --> 00:58:20.070
It's been um really hard to kind of get people wrapped around that

00:58:20.070 --> 00:58:20.870
mentality.

00:58:21.030 --> 00:58:26.550
But there are a few clinical trials out there working on exactly doing that.

00:58:26.790 --> 00:58:32.470
Same drug that is already passed and given to patients, but just at lower doses,

00:58:32.710 --> 00:58:36.150
um, and only responding when the tumor responds to it.

00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:36.720
Yeah.

00:58:36.800 --> 00:58:37.520
It's so interesting.

00:58:37.680 --> 00:58:40.400
Metaphors of like science or physiology.

00:58:40.480 --> 00:58:41.120
It's really interesting.

00:58:41.200 --> 00:58:44.080
I never thought about like metaphors of like how to think about medicine.

00:58:44.240 --> 00:58:49.840
But yeah, that's going to totally affect the way you know physicians or the the

00:58:49.840 --> 00:58:52.000
applied folks are going to use things.

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

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

00:59:02.960 --> 00:59:03.200
hearing.

00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:03.520
Yeah.

00:59:03.760 --> 00:59:04.160
Yes.

00:59:04.370 --> 00:59:04.930
Yes.

00:59:05.170 --> 00:59:09.730
And and the thing is, unfortunate well, fortunately enough, many times there could be a

00:59:09.730 --> 00:59:10.450
cure, right?

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

00:59:15.010 --> 00:59:18.930
cancer and do chemotherapy and it works.

00:59:19.250 --> 00:59:24.930
And they're five like five years, 10 years, no, no sign of disease, right?

00:59:25.090 --> 00:59:29.260
And so it's one figuring out who falls into what category.

00:59:29.420 --> 00:59:30.780
When is it a cure case?

00:59:30.860 --> 00:59:34.380
When is it a case where we're just going to do long-term treatment?

00:59:34.780 --> 00:59:40.780
And then how do the whole treatment regime should be how do we avoid

00:59:40.780 --> 00:59:41.660
resistance?

00:59:42.940 --> 00:59:44.940
So super cool.

00:59:45.100 --> 00:59:45.420
Yeah.

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

00:59:50.990 --> 00:59:56.190
destruction and and conquest into like herding and domestication, like dealing with the

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

01:00:01.550 --> 01:00:04.910
that um to control the disease.

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

01:00:11.080 --> 01:00:15.320
definitely very open to the the idea, especially when they've been living with the disease

01:00:15.320 --> 01:00:16.040
for so long.

01:00:16.280 --> 01:00:18.680
Is it it's like it's a part of me?

01:00:18.840 --> 01:00:20.440
Why don't I go ahead and name it?

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

01:00:26.360 --> 01:00:27.720
of our lives, right?

01:00:28.040 --> 01:00:30.840
And so yeah, I think it can be really impactful.

01:00:31.160 --> 01:00:31.560
Yeah.

01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:35.400
Um, in that those are great examples of evolutionary medicine.

01:00:35.560 --> 01:00:41.530
Um, how uh how how far in, how much

01:00:41.530 --> 01:00:43.770
has evolutionary medicine invaded medicine?

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

01:00:48.810 --> 01:00:54.810
about, like doctors don't do, you know, like like like the basic research and that

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

01:01:00.720 --> 01:01:05.280
uh decisions made on sort of not getting sued as opposed to what's medically or

01:01:05.280 --> 01:01:06.560
scientifically best.

01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:12.720
Um do you have a sense of either just, you know, uh from the

01:01:12.720 --> 01:01:18.720
historical perspective of like, is evolutionary medicine being incorporated into day

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?

01:01:25.200 --> 01:01:25.840
Yeah.

01:01:26.880 --> 01:01:29.600
I think I I don't think we're there yet.

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

01:01:35.670 --> 01:01:40.950
person in a a sea of, you know, people that weren't interested in the evolutionary

01:01:40.950 --> 01:01:41.750
perspective.

01:01:41.990 --> 01:01:47.670
And, you know, we spent most of our time explaining why evolution was useful in

01:01:47.670 --> 01:01:49.030
human health, right?

01:01:49.820 --> 01:01:55.180
And I I I still see that potentially the case today, with few excepts

01:01:55.340 --> 01:02:01.180
exceptions, you know, um, in terms of antibiotic resistance or something, we know that the

01:02:01.180 --> 01:02:02.860
bacteria are evolving.

01:02:02.940 --> 01:02:08.700
And so there is some uptake of trying to understand evolutionary principles

01:02:08.700 --> 01:02:09.260
for that.

01:02:09.500 --> 01:02:13.980
But I think in general, it's still a completely different track.

01:02:14.140 --> 01:02:17.750
It is not taught in med schools or rarely taught in med schools.

01:02:17.910 --> 01:02:23.110
There's been a big push for evolutionary medicine to be more incorporated into

01:02:23.350 --> 01:02:29.190
medical school um um course structures and stuff like that but and

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

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.

01:02:39.190 --> 01:02:39.350
Right.

01:02:39.510 --> 01:02:41.110
They still just want to know what's happening.

01:02:44.140 --> 01:02:45.100
And so that's the thing.

01:02:45.180 --> 01:02:50.380
Like, we're working on something that potentially a species in nature, like elephants are

01:02:50.380 --> 01:02:51.740
really good at not getting cancer.

01:02:51.900 --> 01:02:57.500
If we use that mechanism and then suddenly it works to treat human cancers, how

01:02:57.500 --> 01:03:01.820
many people care that you know we were inspired by evolution?

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

01:03:07.260 --> 01:03:08.540
seeing patients die of?

01:03:08.780 --> 01:03:09.020
Right.

01:03:09.180 --> 01:03:09.420
Right?

01:03:09.580 --> 01:03:09.740
Yeah.

01:03:10.060 --> 01:03:15.990
And so I think, yeah, there there's there's room for evolution in

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

01:03:20.630 --> 01:03:25.350
provide the more practical bench side approaches that they get.

01:03:25.830 --> 01:03:30.390
But I mean, still even in basic research, I mean, uh my understanding is in medicine,

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

01:03:34.630 --> 01:03:34.870
problem.

01:03:35.030 --> 01:03:36.150
You just don't know, right?

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

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

01:03:47.000 --> 01:03:51.480
sea cucumber, and it led to like this transformative discovery.

01:03:51.720 --> 01:03:57.400
Um is there enough of that kind of investment in

01:03:57.640 --> 01:03:59.480
in from an evolutionary perspective?

01:03:59.640 --> 01:04:02.920
Because I mean, I I I assume, or maybe it's wrong.

01:04:03.000 --> 01:04:03.560
Like, I don't know.

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

01:04:07.160 --> 01:04:12.950
little investment in basic risky research that might have a payout.

01:04:13.110 --> 01:04:13.750
I don't know.

01:04:13.910 --> 01:04:14.550
Yeah.

01:04:17.270 --> 01:04:17.990
Easy question.

01:04:18.310 --> 01:04:20.150
Talk to talk to the grant funders.

01:04:20.230 --> 01:04:22.230
Um NIH, not so much.

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

01:04:27.510 --> 01:04:31.980
eye towards how do we make it, you know, into humans?

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

01:04:36.940 --> 01:04:37.340
humans?

01:04:37.500 --> 01:04:42.940
It's been hard, it's been considered risky, it's been like really uh difficult

01:04:43.260 --> 01:04:45.500
to provide this.

01:04:45.660 --> 01:04:48.860
But same thing, we don't know what we're gonna learn in basic biology.

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

01:04:54.620 --> 01:05:00.410
treating individuals with diabetes, was discovered in basic biology

01:05:00.570 --> 01:05:02.170
studying the Gila monster.

01:05:02.410 --> 01:05:02.890
Wow.

01:05:03.130 --> 01:05:08.570
It was one single amino acid change that made it, you know, a

01:05:08.570 --> 01:05:13.530
difference between the human version and that that has made a difference in human biology.

01:05:13.690 --> 01:05:19.210
They were not trying to study the Gila monster to treat human and weight loss in

01:05:19.210 --> 01:05:20.250
diabetes, right?

01:05:20.330 --> 01:05:23.210
It was just a basic biology discovery.

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

01:05:28.760 --> 01:05:34.680
sources towards basic biology research where it's it's not so driven where you

01:05:34.680 --> 01:05:37.640
have these deliverables at the at the end of the day.

01:05:37.880 --> 01:05:43.560
The NSF is obviously more keen to um to

01:05:43.960 --> 01:05:49.470
uh fund stuff that is on that level of basic biology and just

01:05:49.470 --> 01:05:51.950
understanding a species biology.

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

01:05:56.030 --> 01:05:57.630
on a human disease.

01:05:57.870 --> 01:05:59.550
Like go to the NIH.

01:05:59.630 --> 01:06:05.310
And so unfortunately, there is like this evolutionary medicine falls into this, like

01:06:05.790 --> 01:06:11.550
really in-between that ends up being left behind in many of these

01:06:12.120 --> 01:06:17.960
uh programs because we were interested in evolutionary percept perspectives on

01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:19.240
disease in humans.

01:06:19.320 --> 01:06:20.920
And there's like, yeah.

01:06:21.320 --> 01:06:22.040
That's crazy.

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

01:06:27.880 --> 01:06:29.000
to the solution.

01:06:29.560 --> 01:06:35.530
And I imagine if you looked the probably evolutionary medicine has a much more

01:06:35.530 --> 01:06:38.890
efficient track record than though these assumptions.

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

01:06:44.810 --> 01:06:45.610
understand cancer.

01:06:45.770 --> 01:06:48.730
There are some species that do not get much cancer at all.

01:06:48.890 --> 01:06:51.050
We could almost consider them resistant.

01:06:51.290 --> 01:06:54.490
Why are we not studying these more and providing so many funds?

01:06:54.650 --> 01:06:57.210
They're they're mammals potentially like us.

01:06:57.450 --> 01:07:01.610
It's already proven for millions and millions of years for this species.

01:07:01.920 --> 01:07:05.680
how can we not translate that better into human biology?

01:07:05.760 --> 01:07:10.400
So Yeah, no, natural selection is just an incredible, much much better than any

01:07:10.400 --> 01:07:14.560
pharmaceutical company at creating uh substances.

01:07:14.720 --> 01:07:18.000
It's had much longer, uh, much much more RD.

01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:20.800
Much more RD, more RD than you'll ever have time for.

01:07:20.880 --> 01:07:21.040
Yeah.

01:07:21.280 --> 01:07:22.240
So it's crazy.

01:07:22.320 --> 01:07:28.240
Umthough, I mean, I'm in the academic world, there are tons of startups that are

01:07:28.240 --> 01:07:28.960
looking at this.

01:07:29.170 --> 01:07:35.170
They're like bio-inspired medicine that are that are turning to look at species

01:07:35.170 --> 01:07:40.770
for various things, not just cancer, but tons of different um health

01:07:40.930 --> 01:07:42.530
issues in in humans.

01:07:42.690 --> 01:07:43.170
So yeah.

01:07:44.130 --> 01:07:46.210
Have you uh uh David, were you gonna say something?

01:07:46.530 --> 01:07:51.580
No, I was just gonna say, like, you know, obviously we're seeing similar resistance to

01:07:51.580 --> 01:07:57.100
evolutionary perspectives in the social sciences as well, uh in um psychiatry and and

01:07:57.100 --> 01:07:58.300
mental health as well.

01:07:58.460 --> 01:08:01.340
Um there's just the uptake is very slow.

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

01:08:05.660 --> 01:08:08.700
podcast is to try to push things along in that direction.

01:08:08.860 --> 01:08:10.630
Um we're about halfway there.

01:08:10.710 --> 01:08:12.790
We've made a huge dent we oh yeah.

01:08:12.870 --> 01:08:16.070
I mean we next next year everyone's fundamentally changed.

01:08:17.670 --> 01:08:19.910
Hey you guys have a good trajectory.

01:08:20.070 --> 01:08:21.350
You're getting followers.

01:08:21.510 --> 01:08:21.990
It's great.

01:08:22.230 --> 01:08:22.470
Yes.

01:08:22.710 --> 01:08:23.430
Yes, but yes.

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

01:08:27.030 --> 01:08:27.110
know.

01:08:27.190 --> 01:08:27.830
Yeah, we'll be fine.

01:08:29.640 --> 01:08:30.280
Sorry, David.

01:08:30.360 --> 01:08:30.600
Go ahead.

01:08:30.760 --> 01:08:33.640
Anyway, yeah, I'm just because of interjections like that.

01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:39.000
That's why Yeah, we can't even get our names right in the introduction.

01:08:39.320 --> 01:08:42.520
We think we're gonna change the face of American science.

01:08:42.600 --> 01:08:42.840
No.

01:08:43.000 --> 01:08:47.240
Um uh so yeah, I just uh I wanna know why.

01:08:47.400 --> 01:08:49.320
Like why w what is the resistance?

01:08:49.480 --> 01:08:53.470
I mean, I get your point that with medicine there's a certain urgency.

01:08:53.630 --> 01:08:59.550
And there's a certain callousness to daydreaming about evolution when people are

01:08:59.550 --> 01:09:00.350
dying, right?

01:09:00.430 --> 01:09:03.390
Like there you need to get a practical solution right now.

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

01:09:07.790 --> 01:09:08.990
and microchimerism.

01:09:09.230 --> 01:09:12.190
Like people are dying, focus on what's happening right now.

01:09:12.430 --> 01:09:15.150
And like I get that perspective on an intuitive level.

01:09:15.230 --> 01:09:16.590
Like I understand it.

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,

01:09:21.700 --> 01:09:22.260
I think.

01:09:22.500 --> 01:09:25.860
Um really with there, there's really no exc like excuse there.

01:09:26.020 --> 01:09:30.180
Like the whole point is to understand the human condition, the human mind, uh how hum

01:09:30.420 --> 01:09:35.060
humans are embedded in their social structures and how they, you know, can achieve you know

01:09:35.220 --> 01:09:36.660
well-being in their lives.

01:09:36.820 --> 01:09:42.610
Like I it seems like evolution should be moving at a faster pace as a

01:09:42.610 --> 01:09:44.690
meta theory for encompassing that stuff.

01:09:44.850 --> 01:09:45.970
Um so yeah, I don't know.

01:09:46.050 --> 01:09:50.130
Uh do you have uh an intuition about why the uptake is so slow?

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

01:09:58.370 --> 01:10:02.770
perspective in general in in in our education.

01:10:03.780 --> 01:10:04.100
Right.

01:10:04.340 --> 01:10:09.060
Like, I don't like if you go and I the difference is shocking.

01:10:09.220 --> 01:10:15.220
If I have colleagues working in the UK, and they I feel like

01:10:15.220 --> 01:10:20.500
culturally they have a more naturalistic upbringing in their education, where they

01:10:20.820 --> 01:10:26.710
everyone, even if you're not teaching evolution, is it's kind of embedded

01:10:26.710 --> 01:10:27.670
a bit more.

01:10:27.910 --> 01:10:32.870
And I think there is just such a a divide in the US about even

01:10:33.350 --> 01:10:36.230
talking about evolution and and bringing it in.

01:10:36.310 --> 01:10:38.550
And like it's it's it's huge.

01:10:38.710 --> 01:10:40.070
But I see these differences.

01:10:40.230 --> 01:10:45.830
Like when I talk to, you know, individuals in the UK about like, oh,

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.

01:10:49.750 --> 01:10:52.460
And then you come here and like it's it's a mess.

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.

01:10:56.700 --> 01:10:58.300
And so I I don't know.

01:10:58.380 --> 01:11:04.300
I wonder if some of it is um how we educate

01:11:04.300 --> 01:11:09.420
our children and how that is culturally different from the US and other

01:11:09.420 --> 01:11:11.020
countries as well.

01:11:11.580 --> 01:11:17.290
Um I yeah, I I don't know why it's such a struggle to

01:11:17.290 --> 01:11:22.650
get evolution in more mainstream thinking.

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

01:11:28.890 --> 01:11:33.610
it harder for us by by misusing it, right?

01:11:34.020 --> 01:11:38.820
By misusing how evolution works in in in various ways.

01:11:38.980 --> 01:11:44.660
We see this, you know, today with um people on platforms saying that like,

01:11:44.820 --> 01:11:49.700
oh, this is how you should eat or this is how you should think, because evolutionarily

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.

01:11:55.700 --> 01:11:57.780
Eat a pound of bacon, eat a pound of bacon, yeah.

01:11:57.940 --> 01:12:00.820
Yeah, like and so that's problematic.

01:12:01.150 --> 01:12:07.150
You have these these misguided efforts that use evolution

01:12:07.150 --> 01:12:10.430
as an excuse for terrible things.

01:12:10.670 --> 01:12:11.710
So yeah.

01:12:11.870 --> 01:12:13.390
No, it's I mean, that's totally true.

01:12:13.470 --> 01:12:17.550
I mean, but you also see that in like general, there's like pseudoscience in general.

01:12:17.950 --> 01:12:21.870
There's perversions of of mainstream science, but it doesn't tarnish our image of science

01:12:21.870 --> 01:12:24.960
itself when a few crackpots have some stupid ideas.

01:12:25.120 --> 01:12:29.360
But when a few crackpots and the evolutionary sciences have some stupid ideas, then it it

01:12:29.360 --> 01:12:33.120
somehow tarnishes the entire evolutionary perspective in a way that it doesn't for other

01:12:33.120 --> 01:12:33.520
sciences.

01:12:33.600 --> 01:12:34.000
I don't know.

01:12:34.080 --> 01:12:35.600
I really don't know why that is.

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

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

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

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

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.

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,

01:13:12.400 --> 01:13:14.080
you didn't spend any time thinking if you should, right?

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

01:13:19.520 --> 01:13:25.520
victims of all kinds of right research, uh especially in the US, um

01:13:25.680 --> 01:13:26.960
in the 20th century.

01:13:27.040 --> 01:13:29.520
Like that's pretty historically documented, yeah.

01:13:30.080 --> 01:13:33.950
And I just think it's so hard to get misinformation away once it's tarnished.

01:13:34.030 --> 01:13:38.350
I guess the other one, like once it hits mainstream, and I think evolutionary psychology

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.

01:13:43.310 --> 01:13:49.070
And another relevant one that also hit mainstream that is completely not true is like

01:13:49.230 --> 01:13:51.150
the vaccines cause autism.

01:13:51.390 --> 01:13:51.550
Yeah.

01:13:51.710 --> 01:13:56.860
That researcher and Andrew Wakefield lost his license and was like, Yeah, I made that all

01:13:56.860 --> 01:13:57.020
up.

01:13:57.180 --> 01:14:00.300
And people like, yeah, you can read all about it.

01:14:00.460 --> 01:14:05.500
There's books, there's all this information to prove that that is not true.

01:14:06.300 --> 01:14:09.020
Yet here we are, and that's tarnished the field.

01:14:09.100 --> 01:14:15.020
There's such hesitant, hesit hesitancy in in vaccine research,

01:14:15.340 --> 01:14:17.500
vaccine dis distribution.

01:14:17.740 --> 01:14:18.780
Um, yeah.

01:14:18.940 --> 01:14:19.340
Yeah.

01:14:19.580 --> 01:14:22.140
I think there's these these sticky topics.

01:14:22.380 --> 01:14:22.620
Yeah.

01:14:22.700 --> 01:14:23.260
Yeah.

01:14:23.710 --> 01:14:25.070
Although I yeah.

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

01:14:30.910 --> 01:14:33.390
redirection of the people who are out to get you.

01:14:33.630 --> 01:14:39.310
Often the people who are exploiting people are incentivized to have another set of people

01:14:39.630 --> 01:14:42.430
being the scapegoats of who's exploiting the people.

01:14:42.510 --> 01:14:42.750
Yeah.

01:14:42.990 --> 01:14:43.310
Yeah.

01:14:43.550 --> 01:14:48.600
And it might it might very well be fields most vulnerable where you get this confirmation

01:14:48.600 --> 01:14:49.240
bias.

01:14:49.800 --> 01:14:50.120
Right.

01:14:50.280 --> 01:14:54.840
Like we're really bad at that, where it's like, oh yeah, I knew, yep.

01:14:55.080 --> 01:14:58.680
I knew a a child that got a vaccine and like, yep.

01:14:58.840 --> 01:15:00.040
So yes, that's true.

01:15:00.120 --> 01:15:05.400
And maybe very similar for things in evolutionary psychology where people are like, Yeah, I

01:15:05.400 --> 01:15:07.880
know like that that that makes sense to me.

01:15:07.960 --> 01:15:13.930
And like there other things maybe are not so vulnerable to these confirmation biases

01:15:14.010 --> 01:15:19.290
and so then don't have such a controversy around them, right?

01:15:19.450 --> 01:15:21.930
Where you can't get rid of that misinformation.

01:15:22.250 --> 01:15:23.690
Yeah, that's really interesting.

01:15:23.850 --> 01:15:26.250
Uh Amy, you're it's just a slightly changed topic.

01:15:26.410 --> 01:15:30.170
You you're in an anthropology department, but you kind of talked at the beginning about

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.

01:15:35.290 --> 01:15:39.340
Um how did you so what is that like?

01:15:39.420 --> 01:15:43.900
And do you do you do like collaborations with people in the field?

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

01:15:48.620 --> 01:15:49.580
questions all the time.

01:15:49.660 --> 01:15:53.580
But uh the other question is you mentioned you were originally like in medical school.

01:15:53.740 --> 01:15:55.820
Did you know you wanted to do evolution?

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

01:16:01.910 --> 01:16:05.190
of like how did you get to where you are and where are you now?

01:16:05.430 --> 01:16:09.430
And are you do you still feel like you don't quite fit anywhere?

01:16:09.670 --> 01:16:13.990
Um is that next question.

01:16:14.070 --> 01:16:14.310
Yeah.

01:16:14.630 --> 01:16:14.790
Yeah.

01:16:15.590 --> 01:16:16.150
Ah no.

01:16:16.390 --> 01:16:20.550
No, I um I had no idea what I was doing in undergrad.

01:16:20.950 --> 01:16:26.840
Like I went to a community college, was like, I like biology, went on to

01:16:26.920 --> 01:16:32.920
like you know, um, a university, um, still didn't know what I wanted to do.

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

01:16:37.400 --> 01:16:41.240
not have to deal with uh adult life stuff.

01:16:41.480 --> 01:16:47.320
And so I I did know that I wanted to work with humans and humans somehow.

01:16:47.560 --> 01:16:53.250
Um, And actually, when I was in undergrad, I was struggling between biology and then

01:16:53.250 --> 01:16:54.770
anthropology, right?

01:16:55.010 --> 01:17:01.010
Because all of my biology classes were like biology of plants and, you know, like

01:17:01.010 --> 01:17:06.450
things that just didn't excite me in the same way human biology excited me.

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

01:17:11.090 --> 01:17:11.730
school to study.

01:17:12.610 --> 01:17:15.890
We really do separate our fields a little weird.

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

01:17:20.540 --> 01:17:23.740
humans, we put them in a different room, a different school.

01:17:23.900 --> 01:17:25.580
It's a silo effect.

01:17:25.740 --> 01:17:30.140
Um and so just on luck, I applied um to get my PhD.

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

01:17:35.660 --> 01:17:38.780
I went to other than I had to stay in the Detroit area.

01:17:39.660 --> 01:17:45.450
And so but there I I my mind became more open to evolutionary

01:17:45.450 --> 01:17:45.850
biology.

01:17:45.930 --> 01:17:47.290
I'd already taken classes.

01:17:47.450 --> 01:17:52.170
There was a there was a faculty member there kind of looking at evolutionary principles to

01:17:52.170 --> 01:17:52.890
cancer already.

01:17:53.050 --> 01:17:55.930
There was another one looking at evolutionary the placenta.

01:17:56.090 --> 01:18:02.010
Like all of this was kind of feeding through my graduate experience in terms

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

01:18:07.450 --> 01:18:09.050
field of evolutionary medicine.

01:18:09.290 --> 01:18:10.570
So I was in Detroit.

01:18:10.720 --> 01:18:13.040
Um, he was in um Ann Arbor.

01:18:13.360 --> 01:18:16.560
So that was just an hour away from where we were.

01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:21.520
And so we as grad students would all drive up when he had evolutionary medicine seminars

01:18:21.520 --> 01:18:22.800
and watch them.

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

01:18:28.800 --> 01:18:29.360
cool.

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

01:18:34.560 --> 01:18:40.550
Surgery, but it was at such a very specific Posting about studying life

01:18:40.550 --> 01:18:43.510
history theory in cancer biology.

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.

01:18:49.190 --> 01:18:52.310
And yeah, so it's kind of where I went.

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

01:18:57.030 --> 01:18:57.670
University.

01:18:57.990 --> 01:19:03.340
Um, we were kind of split between various departments, and there was a center for

01:19:03.340 --> 01:19:04.620
evolutionary medicine there.

01:19:04.780 --> 01:19:07.420
So, but yeah, I think anthropology does all that.

01:19:07.580 --> 01:19:12.620
That's why it's accepting of evolutionary medicine, is that anthropology is already this

01:19:12.620 --> 01:19:17.500
very broad field that has to take many different perspectives and kind of mush it all

01:19:17.500 --> 01:19:19.020
together to understand humans.

01:19:19.100 --> 01:19:23.340
We're we're understanding social circles, we're understanding culture, we look at the

01:19:23.340 --> 01:19:27.950
biology, we look at evolutionary history, we're kind of adding all that in.

01:19:28.270 --> 01:19:29.630
And so yeah.

01:19:30.030 --> 01:19:30.750
Yeah, that's cool.

01:19:30.830 --> 01:19:36.670
And do you feel like um is the UCSB anthro department um uh

01:19:36.910 --> 01:19:42.910
in terms of the biology, hum the human biology, is that sort of a strength in

01:19:42.910 --> 01:19:43.630
that department?

01:19:43.790 --> 01:19:45.470
Or yeah, I think so.

01:19:45.550 --> 01:19:49.320
I there's there's many times where the the students are like, this is biology.

01:19:49.480 --> 01:19:50.600
And I'm like, yes.

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

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,

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

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

01:20:11.930 --> 01:20:13.050
human biologists.

01:20:13.130 --> 01:20:14.090
We are biologists.

01:20:14.250 --> 01:20:15.370
We have wet labs.

01:20:15.450 --> 01:20:19.370
We have like NIH funding, but also we're studying humans.

01:20:19.450 --> 01:20:21.450
So we're in the anthropology department.

01:20:21.530 --> 01:20:24.650
And actually, a lot of the biology is conserved.

01:20:24.890 --> 01:20:29.770
So when I'm teaching genetics, yes, you're learning fruit fly genetics that will eventually

01:20:29.770 --> 01:20:31.770
get to human genetics, but yeah.

01:20:32.010 --> 01:20:36.490
A lot of the the the stuff is conserved biology across systems.

01:20:36.730 --> 01:20:36.970
Yeah.

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

01:20:41.940 --> 01:20:43.380
right now about the microbiome.

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

01:20:48.740 --> 01:20:54.420
evolutionarily um EA-ish um people, you know, hunter

01:20:54.420 --> 01:20:58.820
horticulturist, hunter gatherers, their microbiomes look very different than like a Western

01:20:59.700 --> 01:21:05.430
modern um is what you study a case where there's less of a sort of

01:21:05.430 --> 01:21:08.950
mismatchy thing, or do you think there still might be mismatchy stuff?

01:21:09.030 --> 01:21:14.790
Like, I mean, obviously breastfeeding, um, the the the an absence of breastfeeding

01:21:15.030 --> 01:21:20.950
or um or like a reduced amount of maternal per leave or um or

01:21:20.950 --> 01:21:23.510
maybe c sections that are planned.

01:21:23.670 --> 01:21:24.220
I don't know.

01:21:24.300 --> 01:21:28.700
Like, is that something you've thought about, or is there potential mismatch-y kind of

01:21:28.700 --> 01:21:28.860
things?

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

01:21:33.820 --> 01:21:38.060
know and inadvertently maybe making our ourselves less healthy, for example?

01:21:38.460 --> 01:21:39.100
Yeah.

01:21:39.500 --> 01:21:39.980
Yeah.

01:21:41.420 --> 01:21:46.140
I yes, mismatch is very much a part of what we're studying.

01:21:46.300 --> 01:21:50.990
Um in the cancer point of view, I think of mismatch of a long history.

01:21:51.150 --> 01:21:53.150
So we're looking at cancer and chimpanzees.

01:21:53.310 --> 01:21:56.510
What do they get compared to what humans get, right?

01:21:56.670 --> 01:22:00.510
So it's a broader mismatch in terms of that a little bit.

01:22:01.150 --> 01:22:05.950
And it's interesting, we're seeing very different patterns of cancer in our closest living

01:22:05.950 --> 01:22:06.590
relatives.

01:22:06.830 --> 01:22:08.670
So, like what's going on there?

01:22:08.830 --> 01:22:11.550
And then, yeah, with with the pregnancy stuff, same thing.

01:22:11.710 --> 01:22:14.350
Yeah, like mismatch in terms of C-sections.

01:22:14.430 --> 01:22:17.700
We see maybe more spillover of fetal cells.

01:22:18.820 --> 01:22:21.780
So there's there's some there's some consequences.

01:22:21.940 --> 01:22:27.940
Also, yeah, breastfeeding in in general, thinking about it from a a mismatch point of

01:22:27.940 --> 01:22:33.940
view in terms of how much you're doing, but also thinking about breastfeeding

01:22:33.940 --> 01:22:39.790
from a maternal fetal conflict kind of view, it's it's interesting because we always

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

01:22:44.830 --> 01:22:47.150
for the infant, infant, infant focused.

01:22:47.390 --> 01:22:48.670
What's best for the mother?

01:22:48.910 --> 01:22:54.350
How long should the mother breastfeed for her own best

01:22:54.590 --> 01:22:55.870
health and interest?

01:22:56.030 --> 01:22:59.980
And that is that's missing in our narrative completely.

01:23:00.300 --> 01:23:06.220
Um and there could be a trade-off at some point where the breastfeeding is still

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

01:23:11.020 --> 01:23:12.060
biological process.

01:23:12.220 --> 01:23:14.380
It has a demand on the maternal body.

01:23:14.540 --> 01:23:15.660
It's inflammatory.

01:23:15.740 --> 01:23:17.580
It's got all these other things going on.

01:23:17.740 --> 01:23:18.620
So yeah.

01:23:18.940 --> 01:23:19.420
Yeah.

01:23:19.740 --> 01:23:20.300
Cool.

01:23:20.590 --> 01:23:25.630
Yeah, that's one of the great um insights of the evolutionary perspective, which is it

01:23:25.630 --> 01:23:26.990
focuses you on trade-offs.

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

01:23:31.870 --> 01:23:32.830
good for mom.

01:23:33.070 --> 01:23:34.190
Uh you know.

01:23:34.430 --> 01:23:37.390
So I I I think that's a really important insight.

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

01:23:42.420 --> 01:23:44.420
Pito or Pedo's paradox.

01:23:44.980 --> 01:23:46.100
I don't know how it's pronounced.

01:23:46.180 --> 01:23:47.780
Uh I'm cu I I don't know what that is.

01:23:47.860 --> 01:23:49.060
I'd like to learn about what it is.

01:23:49.140 --> 01:23:50.820
I like a good paradox.

01:23:51.140 --> 01:23:51.380
Yes.

01:23:51.460 --> 01:23:57.300
Um The thing about paradoxes

01:23:57.300 --> 01:23:58.580
is they're very no.

01:23:58.820 --> 01:24:03.140
Um yeah, it's it's Pedo's paradox and this is great.

01:24:03.300 --> 01:24:06.470
Um this is was proposed in the 70s.

01:24:06.550 --> 01:24:08.950
It was an epidemiologist, Richard Pito.

01:24:09.430 --> 01:24:11.110
Um, he was studying cancer evolution.

01:24:11.590 --> 01:24:17.590
Cancer um is such an interesting case study for you know

01:24:18.230 --> 01:24:21.830
how technology really shifted the field.

01:24:22.070 --> 01:24:26.150
Because I think in the 70s we knew cancer evolved, right?

01:24:26.310 --> 01:24:31.520
And cancer cells evolved, and there's these evolutionary principles of cancer.

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

01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:38.880
everything and try and find the cancer gene and the genetics.

01:24:38.960 --> 01:24:42.160
And then we got really too detailed, right?

01:24:42.320 --> 01:24:47.760
Instead of looking at this big holistic picture and trying to fundamentally understand that

01:24:47.760 --> 01:24:51.360
each cancer is different and it's a whole bunch of different mutation signatures.

01:24:51.440 --> 01:24:53.360
And it's like this emergent property.

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

01:24:58.510 --> 01:25:02.990
this, like, oh, we went that route and actually we got to go more holistic.

01:25:03.150 --> 01:25:05.230
But in the 70s, it was so amazing.

01:25:05.390 --> 01:25:11.150
Richard Pito observed that elephants have a hundred more cells in humans.

01:25:11.390 --> 01:25:17.310
If cancer is a disease of cell division and cell mutation,

01:25:17.630 --> 01:25:20.990
shouldn't species that have more cells have more cancer?

01:25:21.520 --> 01:25:25.920
But what I'm seeing is humans have a lot more cancer than elephants.

01:25:26.080 --> 01:25:29.200
Not all elephants are dropping dead of cancer, right?

01:25:29.440 --> 01:25:31.200
So what's going on there?

01:25:31.360 --> 01:25:37.280
And the idea is they must have evolved more cancer defense mechanisms

01:25:37.280 --> 01:25:43.120
than humans, at least, in order to maintain their soma and maintain the amount of

01:25:43.120 --> 01:25:45.840
cells that they have for a really long time, too.

01:25:45.920 --> 01:25:48.080
They can live into their 60s, right?

01:25:48.610 --> 01:25:51.330
Um, so they have this huge body in Soma.

01:25:52.690 --> 01:25:54.770
Um, and so that was proposed.

01:25:54.930 --> 01:25:58.770
And then, okay, so do we test how do we test this?

01:25:58.930 --> 01:26:02.210
And so we worked with actually a bunch of zoos.

01:26:02.610 --> 01:26:05.330
Um, and that's that was a wild ride.

01:26:05.410 --> 01:26:11.330
Um, because um just different zoos have different protocols, but they all have like

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

01:26:16.920 --> 01:26:17.320
animals?

01:26:17.400 --> 01:26:18.680
And they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:26:18.760 --> 01:26:22.760
We could we could work with you and you just gotta fill out a research proposal.

01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:25.400
Um, what species do you want to work on?

01:26:25.480 --> 01:26:27.080
And I said, all of them.

01:26:27.400 --> 01:26:30.360
And they would they were like, no, you can't.

01:26:30.680 --> 01:26:31.640
It was like silence.

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.

01:26:36.760 --> 01:26:40.440
But we eventually started working with a bunch, like it got it got easier.

01:26:40.680 --> 01:26:42.370
Um, and then we tested that.

01:26:42.530 --> 01:26:44.530
Do elephants actually get less cancer?

01:26:44.610 --> 01:26:47.330
Because this was just a really elegant theory, right?

01:26:47.490 --> 01:26:48.210
And I love this.

01:26:48.290 --> 01:26:52.290
I love this is why we need more theory in this kind of work.

01:26:52.450 --> 01:26:53.010
And they do.

01:26:53.170 --> 01:26:55.410
They do, they still get cancer.

01:26:55.730 --> 01:26:56.050
Okay.

01:26:57.170 --> 01:27:03.020
But all else being equal for the amount of cells they have, they get less than

01:27:03.020 --> 01:27:05.980
what is predicted based on humans.

01:27:06.140 --> 01:27:11.900
And then we um a colleagues of mine sequenced their genome and discovered there's a

01:27:11.900 --> 01:27:13.260
gene that we get.

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.

01:27:17.740 --> 01:27:23.580
And it's called P53, and it's tagline the guardian of the genome.

01:27:23.820 --> 01:27:24.140
Okay.

01:27:24.620 --> 01:27:29.350
So if you get a mutation, it turns on and it makes decisions.

01:27:29.510 --> 01:27:30.470
Does the cell die?

01:27:30.710 --> 01:27:31.430
Do we fix it?

01:27:31.590 --> 01:27:32.710
Do we do all these things?

01:27:32.790 --> 01:27:34.150
It's a central feature.

01:27:34.230 --> 01:27:35.430
It's highly conserved.

01:27:35.510 --> 01:27:36.630
It's an important gene.

01:27:36.870 --> 01:27:37.910
So we have two copies.

01:27:37.990 --> 01:27:43.910
It seems like elephants have um 40 copies, potentially, up to that many.

01:27:44.150 --> 01:27:46.630
Um, and so that was a really neat discovery.

01:27:46.710 --> 01:27:50.470
It's like, oh, this may be why they get less cancer.

01:27:50.550 --> 01:27:52.470
They have extras of this gene.

01:27:52.630 --> 01:27:58.480
This gene is also, um, if it's mutated, um, it's mutated in about

01:27:58.480 --> 01:28:00.960
70% of cancers, I think, is the estimate.

01:28:01.120 --> 01:28:03.280
So if it gets knocked out, that's pretty bad.

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

01:28:08.320 --> 01:28:09.120
just be fine.

01:28:09.280 --> 01:28:10.080
So yeah.

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

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

01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:23.050
you could genotype in an elephant or any onion.

01:28:23.370 --> 01:28:23.450
Right.

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

01:28:29.290 --> 01:28:30.010
this discovery.

01:28:30.170 --> 01:28:30.330
Yeah.

01:28:30.650 --> 01:28:31.050
Yes.

01:28:31.210 --> 01:28:31.530
Yes.

01:28:31.690 --> 01:28:32.250
Yes.

01:28:33.210 --> 01:28:34.330
More funding is needed, yeah.

01:28:34.410 --> 01:28:38.010
For theory, evolutionary theory in medicine.

01:28:38.570 --> 01:28:43.690
So is the paradox that we would expect more cancer in organisms with more cells because

01:28:43.690 --> 01:28:47.850
there are more opportunities for cancer to evolve given that there are more cell divisions

01:28:47.850 --> 01:28:49.530
and more mutation opportunities.

01:28:49.740 --> 01:28:52.140
and the fact that we don't see that is the paradox.

01:28:52.380 --> 01:28:53.100
Yes, correct.

01:28:53.340 --> 01:28:53.660
Got it.

01:28:53.900 --> 01:28:57.820
Thank you for vocalizing that because it gets a little bit confusing because everyone's

01:28:57.820 --> 01:28:59.820
like proving P Pito's paradox.

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?

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

01:29:10.540 --> 01:29:16.150
more data's come out, it does seem like Body size does matter in certain law

01:29:16.150 --> 01:29:21.910
larger animals might have might have an increased risk of cancer.

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

01:29:27.510 --> 01:29:27.750
here.

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.

01:29:33.590 --> 01:29:36.310
And so um it's yeah.

01:29:36.630 --> 01:29:37.030
Yeah.

01:29:38.340 --> 01:29:39.140
Is there anything to this?

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

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

01:29:48.180 --> 01:29:48.980
gets cancer.

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?

01:29:52.980 --> 01:29:55.300
It's not it's not that dumb of an idea.

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

01:30:01.370 --> 01:30:05.770
selection, and sometimes cancers can collapse in on itself, right?

01:30:06.010 --> 01:30:08.970
And so the idea that that's an idea that's out there.

01:30:09.130 --> 01:30:15.050
There's very little research on whale cancer because they live

01:30:15.050 --> 01:30:19.690
in the ocean and when they die, they end up at the bottom of the ocean.

01:30:19.770 --> 01:30:22.570
So we don't have a lot of research.

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

01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:30.640
too, and they haven't.

01:30:31.360 --> 01:30:36.160
But we do think they live too, some of the these whale species live 200 years.

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

01:30:41.360 --> 01:30:42.400
getting cancer.

01:30:42.640 --> 01:30:42.880
Yeah.

01:30:43.040 --> 01:30:44.720
Um, what are the mechanisms?

01:30:44.880 --> 01:30:49.680
That's what's really exciting, actually, about a comparative approach is like there's not

01:30:49.680 --> 01:30:50.960
just one solution.

01:30:51.290 --> 01:30:51.530
Yeah.

01:30:51.770 --> 01:30:51.930
Right.

01:30:52.010 --> 01:30:54.410
So elephants have the P53 solution.

01:30:54.650 --> 01:30:55.370
Whales don't.

01:30:55.450 --> 01:30:56.170
What's their solution?

01:30:56.330 --> 01:31:01.690
What if P53 is not very translatable to human, you know, cancer

01:31:01.850 --> 01:31:02.970
therapeutics?

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

01:31:08.970 --> 01:31:14.970
at beyond um elephants and even beyond whales, potentially, um, in terms

01:31:14.970 --> 01:31:15.290
of that.

01:31:15.530 --> 01:31:16.570
So yeah.

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.

01:31:20.810 --> 01:31:23.700
Like we just haven't been able to cool.

01:31:23.780 --> 01:31:24.580
It's such a fun idea.

01:31:24.820 --> 01:31:26.180
I'm glad I'm glad there's some truth to it.

01:31:27.300 --> 01:31:30.660
No one's been able to test it or or prove it.

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.

01:31:35.620 --> 01:31:36.260
But yeah.

01:31:36.580 --> 01:31:40.420
Still though, I mean it's it's an incredible sales pitch for the evolutionary perspective

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

01:31:44.820 --> 01:31:47.780
for cancer out there in the animal kingdom that we just don't know about.

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

01:31:53.510 --> 01:31:55.910
humans in a in a comparative evolutionary context.

01:31:56.310 --> 01:31:56.950
Yeah.

01:31:57.270 --> 01:31:57.670
Yeah.

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

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

01:32:08.470 --> 01:32:10.390
that that might be the most translatable.

01:32:10.470 --> 01:32:13.190
But yeah, there's some really neat species out there.

01:32:13.270 --> 01:32:15.910
Like have you ever heard of the Greenland shark?

01:32:16.340 --> 01:32:16.660
No.

01:32:16.900 --> 01:32:18.020
Is it blind?

01:32:18.740 --> 01:32:19.540
I think so.

01:32:19.780 --> 01:32:20.020
Okay.

01:32:20.100 --> 01:32:20.820
That's all I know.

01:32:21.060 --> 01:32:21.220
Okay.

01:32:22.100 --> 01:32:23.620
I don't even know if I know that.

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

01:32:27.060 --> 01:32:32.980
her all about it once we're um it's its uh lifespan is estimated to

01:32:32.980 --> 01:32:35.220
be around four or five hundred years.

01:32:35.700 --> 01:32:36.260
Wow.

01:32:37.140 --> 01:32:39.990
And then its age of maturation.

01:32:40.230 --> 01:32:44.150
Do you want to guess what the age of maturation is estimated to be?

01:32:44.470 --> 01:32:45.030
100.

01:32:45.270 --> 01:32:46.790
It's 150.

01:32:47.110 --> 01:32:47.510
Wow.

01:32:47.590 --> 01:32:47.910
Wow.

01:32:48.230 --> 01:32:49.270
It is such a slow.

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

01:32:55.430 --> 01:32:58.470
building their cells really carefully.

01:32:59.030 --> 01:33:04.870
And so they have these extra, you know, like, which means they have these extra defenses

01:33:04.870 --> 01:33:05.910
in them, right?

01:33:06.230 --> 01:33:09.320
Like they are so slow growing.

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

01:33:13.800 --> 01:33:14.840
we get cancer?

01:33:15.000 --> 01:33:19.080
It's these trade-offs where like, do I have the opportunity to grow slowly?

01:33:19.240 --> 01:33:19.560
Nope.

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

01:33:25.480 --> 01:33:30.440
resources and access to mates, um, even though it's a little sloppy, right?

01:33:30.600 --> 01:33:33.080
And that's where a lot of organisms end up.

01:33:33.390 --> 01:33:39.070
Greenland Shark clearly doesn't have very many predators and has the opportunity to really

01:33:39.070 --> 01:33:42.590
slow down and take its time and its life history strategy.

01:33:42.670 --> 01:33:43.790
And it's so cool.

01:33:44.110 --> 01:33:44.590
Wow.

01:33:44.750 --> 01:33:45.310
Wow.

01:33:45.630 --> 01:33:46.750
Really cool.

01:33:47.630 --> 01:33:53.630
Um for people who are interested in this kind of approach,

01:33:53.790 --> 01:33:56.910
um, and I can imagine there's two audiences listening.

01:33:57.070 --> 01:34:01.390
One is students who might be interested in like learning more about this or studying

01:34:01.390 --> 01:34:07.080
evolutionary medicine, Uh, in addition to working with you at UCSB, are there

01:34:07.080 --> 01:34:10.360
other, I mean, how many other people are doing this kind of thing?

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

01:34:14.920 --> 01:34:20.760
interested in evolutionary medicine, um, in addition to reaching out to you, who else

01:34:20.760 --> 01:34:21.720
would you suggest?

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

01:34:25.640 --> 01:34:30.070
doing it, but just first like you have suggestions about like who are people who are

01:34:30.070 --> 01:34:31.190
currently doing this kind of work?

01:34:31.430 --> 01:34:31.670
Yes.

01:34:32.310 --> 01:34:34.230
So we have a we have a society.

01:34:34.470 --> 01:34:38.630
It's called the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health.

01:34:38.790 --> 01:34:42.790
And there's a journal called the Evolution Medicine and Public Health Journal.

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

01:34:49.190 --> 01:34:49.670
groups.

01:34:49.830 --> 01:34:55.760
But then within the US, there's these little pockets that have like hot spots of

01:34:55.760 --> 01:34:57.920
individuals that study evolutionary medicine.

01:34:58.240 --> 01:35:04.240
UCLA has an evolutionary medicine program that's a master's program that's quite great.

01:35:04.960 --> 01:35:10.880
Arizona State University has the Center for Evolution and Medicine and is invested

01:35:10.960 --> 01:35:13.710
in has a bunch of different individuals there.

01:35:13.950 --> 01:35:14.910
There it's interesting.

01:35:14.990 --> 01:35:20.750
They're always within an anthro or or adjacent to an anthropology program and a psychology.

01:35:21.230 --> 01:35:24.190
Like it is this interdisciplinary mix.

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

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.

01:35:36.480 --> 01:35:39.920
And so that's been, but it's within the anthropology department.

01:35:40.080 --> 01:35:45.280
There's been a really big growth in individuals studying evolutionary medicine.

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

01:35:51.200 --> 01:35:56.400
countries that are kind of get becoming these hubs for for evolutionary medicine.

01:35:56.800 --> 01:35:57.120
Awesome.

01:35:57.280 --> 01:35:57.920
That sounds great.

01:35:58.070 --> 01:35:58.310
Yeah.

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

01:36:04.070 --> 01:36:09.990
a not terrible popularization, like are there any are there any resources for

01:36:09.990 --> 01:36:10.150
that?

01:36:10.310 --> 01:36:11.350
I mean, that's a hard question.

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

01:36:16.070 --> 01:36:16.870
source, you know.

01:36:17.110 --> 01:36:22.230
Are there um, you know, are there books you would recommend for people who are interested

01:36:22.230 --> 01:36:22.550
in?

01:36:23.190 --> 01:36:29.040
Yeah, uh one of the like land like foundational books is Randy

01:36:29.040 --> 01:36:31.760
Nessie and George Williams Why We Get Sick.

01:36:32.560 --> 01:36:37.600
That's a a really great first pass at evolutionary medicine.

01:36:38.240 --> 01:36:44.160
Um and then there's within the cancer community,

01:36:44.320 --> 01:36:49.520
there's a really great book by James DeGregor DeGregory called Adaptive

01:36:49.750 --> 01:36:51.270
oncogenesis.

01:36:51.750 --> 01:36:54.230
That's a tongue tie, but it's a really great book.

01:36:54.470 --> 01:37:00.310
Um, Athena Actipus has written a book called The Cheating Cell, which also um

01:37:00.790 --> 01:37:03.830
is is has an evolutionary perspective.

01:37:04.070 --> 01:37:07.190
Those two are specifically on cancer biology.

01:37:07.510 --> 01:37:13.190
Um, but I think within every subfield of evolutionary medicine, there's probably some more

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

01:37:19.020 --> 01:37:19.500
that's awesome.

01:37:19.580 --> 01:37:19.980
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:37:20.140 --> 01:37:22.940
I'll remember it tonight while I'm like laying down.

01:37:23.660 --> 01:37:23.900
That's great.

01:37:24.060 --> 01:37:24.860
Oh, I forgot this.

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.

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

01:37:32.860 --> 01:37:35.020
talking to evolutionary medicine people?

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

01:37:39.900 --> 01:37:40.540
same thing, you know.

01:37:41.100 --> 01:37:41.420
Right.

01:37:41.580 --> 01:37:47.110
I was just thinking that because it is these fields that are quite distinct

01:37:47.430 --> 01:37:51.590
but have very similar starting points.

01:37:51.750 --> 01:37:52.070
Yeah.

01:37:52.230 --> 01:37:56.950
And like within the evolutionary medicine field, there clearly are

01:37:57.910 --> 01:38:02.070
evolutionary psychiatrists because that's who Randy Nessie is.

01:38:02.390 --> 01:38:03.830
And oh, and here's another book.

01:38:03.990 --> 01:38:09.960
He wrote a book called um good reasons for bad feelings or something along those lines.

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

01:38:15.720 --> 01:38:20.520
adaptation and anxiety can be an adaptation and all of these things, right?

01:38:21.000 --> 01:38:26.760
Um but it is interesting that these fields haven't necessarily um

01:38:27.710 --> 01:38:30.190
merged as much as you would imagine.

01:38:30.590 --> 01:38:36.510
But I think there is this historical context of like neck

01:38:36.510 --> 01:38:36.670
up.

01:38:37.070 --> 01:38:37.470
Yeah, totally.

01:38:41.150 --> 01:38:41.310
Yeah.

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

01:38:47.230 --> 01:38:52.980
how they um make decisions and yeah but you would I mean from a first

01:38:52.980 --> 01:38:58.900
principles uh evolutionary perspective you would very much expect that the the mind

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

01:39:04.900 --> 01:39:06.660
state of the thing I'm in, right?

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

01:39:12.100 --> 01:39:17.610
should have him on with the lassitude right but there should be all kinds of psychological

01:39:17.610 --> 01:39:22.170
contingencies with uh what's the state of the body, right?

01:39:22.250 --> 01:39:23.210
And back and forth.

01:39:23.370 --> 01:39:25.610
You would expect that on first principles, right?

01:39:25.850 --> 01:39:26.410
Yes.

01:39:26.730 --> 01:39:27.050
Absolutely.

01:39:27.370 --> 01:39:32.810
And and honestly, I see like ways where like, okay, so evolutionary medicine has maybe

01:39:32.810 --> 01:39:36.010
provided these kind of drastic ways we treat people.

01:39:36.170 --> 01:39:37.360
It could be different, right?

01:39:37.520 --> 01:39:39.680
And then we don't see uptake in it, right?

01:39:39.840 --> 01:39:45.760
Like, for example, like when I talk about the cancer therapy of maybe control versus

01:39:45.760 --> 01:39:51.200
cure, we clearly need people to understand why people make the

01:39:51.200 --> 01:39:55.120
decisions they make and why they avoid the decisions they make.

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

01:40:01.270 --> 01:40:03.430
understand and and be able to?

01:40:03.830 --> 01:40:04.310
Oh, interesting.

01:40:04.390 --> 01:40:07.510
So you're even talking about like the psychology of like the intervention and how people

01:40:07.750 --> 01:40:09.270
metaphors people use to think.

01:40:09.430 --> 01:40:10.550
That's a really cool idea.

01:40:10.710 --> 01:40:12.070
That's that's something, yeah.

01:40:12.150 --> 01:40:15.030
Like how do people think about medicine or the body?

01:40:15.270 --> 01:40:15.830
Yes.

01:40:16.070 --> 01:40:17.510
Yeah, that's really cool.

01:40:17.670 --> 01:40:19.910
I don't know if there are any psychology on that.

01:40:20.230 --> 01:40:23.700
Like folk folk physiology, more or less.

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

01:40:30.100 --> 01:40:30.900
about science?

01:40:30.980 --> 01:40:33.060
Like that's I'm I'm aware of work on that.

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

01:40:37.700 --> 01:40:37.780
right.

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,

01:40:42.830 --> 01:40:44.990
ethnographic knowledge that was probably very valuable.

01:40:45.070 --> 01:40:45.870
But yeah, I don't know.

01:40:46.030 --> 01:40:51.790
Is there work on sort of like the intuitive psychology of medicine or physiology or

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,

01:40:55.950 --> 01:40:56.110
right?

01:40:56.510 --> 01:40:57.070
Theory of medicine.

01:40:57.230 --> 01:41:00.030
Like uh we m there might be very well be folk medicine.

01:41:00.350 --> 01:41:00.670
Yeah, yeah.

01:41:00.990 --> 01:41:01.150
Right.

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

01:41:06.780 --> 01:41:08.860
kind of talks about this broader.

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

01:41:13.820 --> 01:41:18.140
societies and how they all they often have pretty impressive you know herbal knowledge and

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

01:41:22.220 --> 01:41:22.620
like that.

01:41:23.260 --> 01:41:23.660
Yes.

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

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.

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

01:41:36.290 --> 01:41:40.930
important topic given how much medicine is interfacing with our lives and with the modern

01:41:40.930 --> 01:41:45.970
world, just getting a handle on how we think about it and how our representations of

01:41:45.970 --> 01:41:49.490
medicine you know interact with our own ability to cope with illness.

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

01:41:56.460 --> 01:42:01.100
folk medicine or, you know, like traditional medicine, but we're not thinking about it in

01:42:01.100 --> 01:42:07.020
terms of like industrial pop industrialized population in our our m

01:42:07.100 --> 01:42:08.140
medicine, right?

01:42:08.300 --> 01:42:08.460
Yeah.

01:42:08.860 --> 01:42:12.610
Um, where there's not really that crossover.

01:42:12.930 --> 01:42:13.810
Yeah, it's still important.

01:42:14.130 --> 01:42:14.930
It's all folk medicine.

01:42:15.010 --> 01:42:15.730
It's all folk medicine.

01:42:15.970 --> 01:42:16.050
Yeah.

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

01:42:20.290 --> 01:42:21.810
a shaman in a white lab coat.

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

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

01:42:33.490 --> 01:42:34.050
discovery.

01:42:34.210 --> 01:42:39.920
Like you you are just like there is still so much of that psychology

01:42:40.080 --> 01:42:43.200
that we just we can't like I can't mess this up.

01:42:43.280 --> 01:42:46.240
I did it worked yesterday, so I have to wear the same outfit.

01:42:46.320 --> 01:42:46.960
I have to do this.

01:42:47.120 --> 01:42:47.840
I have to do that.

01:42:48.000 --> 01:42:52.720
Like there's still so much of that within with within labs.

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

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

01:43:04.290 --> 01:43:04.610
from it.

01:43:04.770 --> 01:43:06.210
We just call it something different.

01:43:06.450 --> 01:43:06.610
Yeah.

01:43:06.770 --> 01:43:07.410
It makes sense.

01:43:07.570 --> 01:43:07.810
Yeah.

01:43:07.890 --> 01:43:08.370
Yeah.

01:43:08.690 --> 01:43:09.010
Yeah.

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?

01:43:14.050 --> 01:43:15.250
Like the world is opaque.

01:43:15.330 --> 01:43:18.050
So you have to yeah, it's everything is a mystery.

01:43:18.130 --> 01:43:18.290
Yeah.

01:43:19.170 --> 01:43:19.250
Yeah.

01:43:19.330 --> 01:43:21.890
We we were just talking uh to Clark Barrett about that.

01:43:21.970 --> 01:43:27.120
Um uh the episode we just released yesterday about how about uh ritual practices and like

01:43:27.120 --> 01:43:29.680
uh pre-hunting dances that the Shuar engage in.

01:43:31.440 --> 01:43:34.640
Yeah, and he made the interesting point that like a lot of our statistical practices are

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

01:43:37.600 --> 01:43:40.080
accepting them because the ancestors have bequeathed them to us.

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.

01:43:46.080 --> 01:43:47.280
Yes, yes, yes.

01:43:47.600 --> 01:43:52.610
Yeah, which I think maybe, yeah, coming back to thinking about applying that in terms of

01:43:52.610 --> 01:43:58.610
getting evolutionary medicine or or any evolutionary perspectives into something is it's

01:43:58.610 --> 01:44:03.570
not already in that ritual doing right.

01:44:03.810 --> 01:44:07.490
Like it's just like, no, we don't do it that way.

01:44:07.570 --> 01:44:08.610
We have to do it this way.

01:44:08.770 --> 01:44:13.170
And yeah, I think it's really unfortunate because it's probably how we structure medical

01:44:13.170 --> 01:44:18.580
schools, it's how we structure schools in general, like in terms of silos.

01:44:18.820 --> 01:44:24.420
Like I want students at UCSB to not have to just take a major

01:44:24.420 --> 01:44:24.900
classes.

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

01:44:30.900 --> 01:44:31.220
possible.

01:44:31.300 --> 01:44:36.450
And I feel like you ask why and people are like, well, because we have

01:44:36.610 --> 01:44:37.410
departments.

01:44:37.570 --> 01:44:38.050
And yeah.

01:44:38.210 --> 01:44:39.570
And then you're like, but why?

01:44:40.050 --> 01:44:40.850
Why do we have departments?

01:44:41.170 --> 01:44:42.130
Why do we have departments?

01:44:42.210 --> 01:44:45.410
And they're like, well, because and like and it's all of this stuff.

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

01:44:51.410 --> 01:44:54.610
have crosstalk across so many different disciplines.

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

01:45:00.340 --> 01:45:01.220
done it this way.

01:45:01.300 --> 01:45:03.220
And those two things are in a loop.

01:45:03.460 --> 01:45:03.700
Yes.

01:45:03.940 --> 01:45:04.100
Right.

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.

01:45:08.500 --> 01:45:09.860
And we've always done it this way.

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

01:45:13.860 --> 01:45:14.100
things.

01:45:14.180 --> 01:45:14.500
Yeah.

01:45:14.900 --> 01:45:15.300
It is.

01:45:15.460 --> 01:45:15.700
Yeah.

01:45:15.940 --> 01:45:16.260
Yeah.

01:45:16.500 --> 01:45:20.340
How did you um we're we're we're getting closer to the end here.

01:45:20.580 --> 01:45:25.060
Um, how did you you talked about sort of the way biology is taught in school.

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

01:45:28.420 --> 01:45:28.820
for David.

01:45:28.990 --> 01:45:33.470
Like I was like learning parts of the grasshopper in by in like high school bio.

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

01:45:38.270 --> 01:45:39.150
taking it was horrible.

01:45:39.230 --> 01:45:41.550
It was just laundry list, it was stamp collecting.

01:45:41.630 --> 01:45:43.070
There were no principles.

01:45:43.310 --> 01:45:45.950
Um, were you interested in biology?

01:45:46.110 --> 01:45:51.790
How did you get interested in in in in like Amy body as a kid?

01:45:51.870 --> 01:45:52.910
Like, how did you get here?

01:45:53.070 --> 01:45:55.310
Like, how do you is there a story?

01:45:55.390 --> 01:45:59.280
Um it's the most boring story.

01:45:59.360 --> 01:46:03.760
No, I was not inter not necessarily interested in the natural world.

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

01:46:09.440 --> 01:46:12.000
observing things and and doing all that.

01:46:12.160 --> 01:46:18.000
And I always liked maybe um like math and and lean towards more

01:46:18.000 --> 01:46:23.680
like quantitative type of analyses and stuff like that, but it

01:46:23.730 --> 01:46:29.570
wasn't until a community college class that I

01:46:29.570 --> 01:46:33.250
took and it was a biology class, and the professor was amazing.

01:46:33.330 --> 01:46:35.730
And he was so excited about biology.

01:46:35.970 --> 01:46:40.210
Um, and I was like, oh wow, this is this is great, right?

01:46:40.290 --> 01:46:41.570
And this is really cool.

01:46:41.730 --> 01:46:43.250
And the same thing with evolution.

01:46:43.410 --> 01:46:47.330
I had no evolution in my high school training at all.

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.

01:46:53.200 --> 01:46:55.280
She is learning about natural selection.

01:46:55.440 --> 01:46:57.600
And I'm always like, wait, you're learning that?

01:46:57.760 --> 01:46:58.960
I'm teaching my undergrad.

01:47:02.000 --> 01:47:06.880
But there is a disconnect, and you have to like you have to reteach these principles

01:47:06.880 --> 01:47:10.480
because you don't know if everyone is getting the same education.

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.

01:47:15.680 --> 01:47:21.450
But yeah, I didn't really start studying biology until I

01:47:21.450 --> 01:47:23.130
was in community college.

01:47:23.210 --> 01:47:24.090
And it was the same thing.

01:47:24.170 --> 01:47:28.890
We're doing labs and dissecting mice and various things.

01:47:29.210 --> 01:47:30.970
And I really liked it.

01:47:31.050 --> 01:47:34.730
And I really liked evolution too, those those types of classes.

01:47:34.810 --> 01:47:36.810
It really opened my mind up.

01:47:37.210 --> 01:47:39.690
Um, so yeah.

01:47:41.660 --> 01:47:43.100
Steven, you were gonna say something.

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

01:47:47.340 --> 01:47:49.020
question about questions.

01:47:49.260 --> 01:47:50.860
Yeah, should we have asked you anything?

01:47:51.020 --> 01:47:51.420
Yes.

01:47:52.540 --> 01:47:55.580
Oh, that's such a tricky question.

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

01:48:01.420 --> 01:48:06.860
minutes a few seconds, we we banter about something else to yeah, to um uh um

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

01:48:12.190 --> 01:48:12.510
about.

01:48:12.750 --> 01:48:13.390
Yeah.

01:48:15.550 --> 01:48:16.670
It's a hard question.

01:48:16.910 --> 01:48:17.550
I know.

01:48:17.710 --> 01:48:17.950
Yeah.

01:48:18.750 --> 01:48:19.790
I can't think of anything.

01:48:20.030 --> 01:48:20.350
That's fine.

01:48:20.430 --> 01:48:20.670
Yeah, yeah.

01:48:21.070 --> 01:48:21.710
That's totally okay.

01:48:22.430 --> 01:48:22.590
Yeah.

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,

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

01:48:30.110 --> 01:48:31.550
him he like came with like a great answer.

01:48:32.910 --> 01:48:34.700
But like we should maybe we should stop.

01:48:35.900 --> 01:48:36.620
Yeah, maybe we should have a lot of people.

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

01:48:40.220 --> 01:48:40.380
about this.

01:48:43.020 --> 01:48:43.660
People are psychic.

01:48:44.060 --> 01:48:45.740
I promoted a a book or something like that.

01:48:45.900 --> 01:48:46.700
Yeah, no, exactly.

01:48:46.780 --> 01:48:47.260
Yeah, yeah.

01:48:47.500 --> 01:48:47.660
Yeah.

01:48:47.820 --> 01:48:48.460
No, grift.

01:48:48.620 --> 01:48:49.740
This is your chance to grip.

01:48:51.340 --> 01:48:52.220
No, this was great.

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.

01:48:58.220 --> 01:48:58.830
And yeah.

01:48:59.230 --> 01:49:00.350
Yeah, it's it's really great.

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

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

01:49:08.270 --> 01:49:08.670
science.

01:49:08.830 --> 01:49:11.150
This is one of the reasons for doing this is just yes.

01:49:11.310 --> 01:49:13.790
It's a great chance to like talk about science.

01:49:14.350 --> 01:49:14.990
Absolutely.

01:49:15.230 --> 01:49:15.790
Yeah.

01:49:16.030 --> 01:49:18.350
Um well thank you for doing what you're doing.

01:49:18.510 --> 01:49:24.190
Um you're literally like helping us understand how like cancer works and you're doing

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

01:49:29.620 --> 01:49:34.020
something in Wales that revolutionizes, you know, what was it?

01:49:34.100 --> 01:49:35.220
The P35.

01:49:35.540 --> 01:49:36.100
P53.

01:49:36.340 --> 01:49:36.900
P53.

01:49:36.980 --> 01:49:37.700
Uh I tried.

01:49:38.020 --> 01:49:38.580
Okay, close.

01:49:38.740 --> 01:49:39.060
Close enough.

01:49:39.540 --> 01:49:42.980
So uh yeah, no, it's just incredible.

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

01:49:48.660 --> 01:49:49.140
funders.

01:49:49.220 --> 01:49:52.500
And it sounds like the funding agencies really need to get their act together too.

01:49:52.870 --> 01:49:58.870
I mean, welcome to the the new state of America funding

01:49:58.870 --> 01:49:59.350
situations.

01:49:59.590 --> 01:49:59.670
Yeah.

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

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

01:50:10.310 --> 01:50:13.270
odd man out or not in the Venn diagram, maybe.

01:50:13.430 --> 01:50:13.590
Yeah.

01:50:13.900 --> 01:50:14.140
Yeah.

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

01:50:17.980 --> 01:50:18.780
that risky.

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.

01:50:25.100 --> 01:50:26.700
And so that's unfortunate.

01:50:26.860 --> 01:50:30.460
But there's foundations that fund some of this stuff.

01:50:30.540 --> 01:50:31.260
And yeah.

01:50:31.660 --> 01:50:31.820
Yeah.

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,

01:50:36.460 --> 01:50:41.930
then that you would love to have a high risk, hype possible like cancer solution, contact

01:50:41.930 --> 01:50:42.650
Amy Body.

01:50:43.050 --> 01:50:43.930
Yes, there you go.

01:50:44.170 --> 01:50:44.730
Absolutely.

01:50:45.050 --> 01:50:47.690
We don't do ads, but that's an ad we can do.

01:50:49.690 --> 01:50:50.170
Yes.

01:50:50.410 --> 01:50:50.810
Yeah.

01:50:51.130 --> 01:50:52.810
Do you is there any like seriously?

01:50:52.970 --> 01:50:56.730
Is there any other things like where people, if they want to like, are there certain

01:50:56.730 --> 01:51:00.330
projects that you think like if people are interested in supporting them, like are there

01:51:00.330 --> 01:51:05.290
other ones, or is that the general thing that it's um yeah?

01:51:05.860 --> 01:51:09.860
Um yeah, I there's tons of like, yeah.

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

01:51:15.780 --> 01:51:21.620
the the whole world of comparative biology is just understudied in so many different

01:51:21.620 --> 01:51:21.940
ways.

01:51:22.100 --> 01:51:27.940
And then we only study the species that matter for who they matter for

01:51:27.940 --> 01:51:28.980
and the population.

01:51:29.140 --> 01:51:32.570
So like, yeah, it's just cool.

01:51:32.730 --> 01:51:33.290
Yeah, yeah.

01:51:33.450 --> 01:51:35.130
Lots of incredible things.

01:51:35.290 --> 01:51:37.210
So um, well, thanks for being on.

01:51:37.290 --> 01:51:38.490
It was it was a pleasure.

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

01:51:44.570 --> 01:51:50.330
an evolutionary psychology podcast, we're also talking to people who

01:51:50.330 --> 01:51:55.370
are doing an evolution who are adaptationists who are doing evolutionary approach, but

01:51:55.370 --> 01:52:00.810
studying or and studying, no but, but and studying the rest of the body or the

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.

01:52:07.040 --> 01:52:09.040
Yeah absolutely this was so fun.

01:52:09.520 --> 01:52:10.400
Thank you for having me on.

01:52:10.960 --> 01:52:11.440
It was wonderful.

01:52:11.520 --> 01:52:11.920
Thanks so much.

01:52:12.320 --> 01:52:12.800
Our pleasure.

01:52:12.880 --> 01:52:13.840
Thanks so much.

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

01:52:22.160 --> 01:52:27.830
the podcast know they can, you know, subscribe and like uh leave positive comments.

01:52:27.990 --> 01:52:30.390
Um we have a Patreon page.

01:52:30.630 --> 01:52:33.030
Um am I leaving anything out?

01:52:33.510 --> 01:52:35.110
I think those are the big ones.

01:52:35.270 --> 01:52:35.910
Uh yeah.

01:52:36.070 --> 01:52:41.990
Just uh support us in in whatever way you can help us push the uh

01:52:42.150 --> 01:52:46.070
the evolutionary framework wider and farther.

01:52:46.600 --> 01:52:52.520
Um we also had um we've also gotten some emails from people and some suggestions

01:52:52.520 --> 01:52:55.720
for guests and that's always appreciated um as well.

01:52:55.880 --> 01:52:59.480
So um yeah and suggestions for topics.

01:52:59.800 --> 01:53:03.480
Um and nobody's gotten David a um fanny pack yet.

01:53:03.800 --> 01:53:06.360
I am starting to get a little peeved to be honest Dave.

01:53:06.680 --> 01:53:11.210
I've been waiting on that fanny pack for months now and it has not arrived.

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

01:53:15.610 --> 01:53:15.770
me.

01:53:16.090 --> 01:53:16.410
Okay.

01:53:16.570 --> 01:53:18.570
That's them them's fighting words.

01:53:18.730 --> 01:53:23.050
Um uh and you said green or black?

01:53:23.690 --> 01:53:25.130
Uh I you know, either one.

01:53:25.450 --> 01:53:28.650
Have you come around to have you decided ideally green and black?

01:53:28.890 --> 01:53:29.610
Striped.

01:53:30.090 --> 01:53:30.410
Okay.

01:53:30.810 --> 01:53:31.320
All right.

01:53:31.480 --> 01:53:32.920
Well, that's one way to do it.

01:53:33.080 --> 01:53:33.400
Okay.

01:53:33.560 --> 01:53:33.800
Yeah.

01:53:34.600 --> 01:53:36.680
Um, and French fries, that's the other thing.

01:53:36.760 --> 01:53:39.320
If you're bringing up the phone, the french fries inside the fanny pack.

01:53:39.400 --> 01:53:42.360
You you you know what I like, listeners.

01:53:42.680 --> 01:53:44.280
You know you know your way to my heart.

01:53:45.240 --> 01:53:46.360
It's so ridiculous.

01:53:46.520 --> 01:53:46.760
Okay.

01:53:46.920 --> 01:53:48.280
Um, well, have a good week.

01:53:48.360 --> 01:53:49.560
Uh thank you for listening.

01:53:49.640 --> 01:53:51.320
Uh, and uh, we'll see you next week.

01:53:51.640 --> 01:53:52.200
See ya