It's Friday, November 1st, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Chris Mooney.

And I'm Indrae Viscontas. Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

You can find us online at climate desk.org. You can follow us on

Twitter at Inquiring Show and on Facebook at slash Enquiring Minds podcast.

This week, we're covering a somewhat morbid topic, but one that seems to affect each one of us personally, at least at some point in our lives.

And that's cancer.

I spoke to veteran science writer George Johnson, who has just published a personal, provocative and very informative exploration of what science does and doesn't know about medicine's deepest mystery.

He's the author of several books,

including the 10 Most Beautiful Experiments and is often published in the New York Times.

Let's listen to how he describes cancer cells. I came to think of them almost as these quasi creatures that are trying to evolve in your body.

Because really what a cancer cell is doing in your body is basically doing what a creature in an ecosystem is doing.

It's giving birth to offspring.

You know, the cells are dividing and making daughter cells. And, you know, along the way,

there are mutations. Some of these mutations are beneficial to the cancer cell. So those cells

that have that mutation will thrive and become, you know, more successful than the surrounding cells.

And then if they acquire another mutation that improves their survival fitness even further,

you know, they continue to evolve and they become fitter and fitter within the ecosystem of your

body. But, you know but ultimately they kill the host.

So, Andre, I really, you know, listening to this interview and getting a sense of what George

Johnson thinks, I really actually, I find myself thinking about cancer in a very different way,

and much more of an evolutionary perspective, and also this sort of ecosystem perspective. And it really

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