From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone this week, exploring cancer in language, in public, and throughout time.

The ancient physicians thought a lump of cancer was like a crab buried under the sand

and all the inflamed blood vessels around it were like the legs of the crab.

Sometimes you feel as a patient as if you're an immigrant and a farmland. the sand and all the inflamed blood vessels around it with like the legs of the crab.

Sometimes you feel as a patient as if you're an immigrant in a foreign country where you just don't speak the language. Simple exposure to these enemy metaphors for cancer, we're actually

dampening people's thoughts of limitation and restraint because that's just not how you fight enemies.

Three out of four Americans are frustrated and confused.

Oh, they got a thing that's going to cure cancer, but then you never hear about it again.

A lot of quackery came from the media attention.

People felt they just wanted to find something to cure him.

This is On the Media.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is away.

I'm Brooke Gladstone, devoting this episode to perceptions of cancer, in language and the news in our minds eye.

So quick, what do you see when I say the word cancer?

A bald head, an x-ray, a loved one. What I see is a pulsating cell, fiery red,

with sunken eyes, a sinister grin, and radiating spikes that twitch and stretch and scrabble across my field of vision. Seriously, that's what I see. In this edition of the show and next weeks,

we're drilling deep down into the construction of cancer

as metaphor, entertainment, and crucible for public action.

For it has been, always will be too much with us.

As long as we live, the longer we live.

...