This is a science podcast for October 2nd, 2025.

I'm Sarah Crespi.

First this week, staff writer Robert Service joins us to talk about a boom in nuclear

medicine for cancer, for more powerful radioisotopes to improved precision and cell targeting.

Next on the show, Why We Sigh,

researcher Maria Clara Nova Silva

discusses how deep breaths

cause tiny rearrangements

at the special interface where air needs lungs,

keeping them healthy and flexible.

Now we have Robert Service.

He wrote a story this week on a search in radio pharmaceuticals research or radioactive drugs for cancer.

Hi, Bob. Welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you so much. You know, I might have started this with why now, but that is like the whole story. There is so much going on right now with radio pharmaceuticals, whether it's sourcing where,

you know, the radioactive particles are coming from, the kinds of drugs they're making with it,

there's ongoing clinical trials, there's so much happening. We're going to get into all of that.

Let's start with how these drugs work and how the targeting works. I think this example that kind of

started things off with iodine is a really good place to kind of get people

oriented. Of course, yeah. Radiation in chemotherapy and cancer treatment has a very long history,

100 years. In most radiation treatment, still today is done by external beam radiation. That's where

they target a beam of radioactivity at a cancer or something

like that. But what we're talking about here are radiopharmaceuticals. So what they do is they link

...