This is TED Health, a podcast from TED, and I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter.

Lately, I've been reflecting on how cancer exists in two places at once.

It exists in research labs and clinical trials.

And it exists at our kitchen tables and late-night internet searches.

In those quiet moments when we wonder what our family history might mean for our own future.

Or in the hard work that comes with the daily struggles of diagnosis and treatment.

For many of us, cancer isn't a distant concept.

It's woven into our personal stories.

It may be a parent's diagnosis, a friend's biopsy result,

or a genetic test that reframes how we think about our bodies and even our time.

As a physician, I see how those experiences shape the way people move through the world.

As a daughter and a member of a family,

carrying our own histories with cancer, I feel it too.

At the same time, we're in an extraordinary era of possibility in medicine.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping research.

Aminotherapy is turning once fatal cancers into chronic and treatable

conditions. Data is flowing at a scale that would have seemed impossible just a decade ago.

It can be hard to hold both realities at once, the deeply human fear and uncertainty that

comes with cancer, and the breathtaking promise of science.

But today's guest works at that exact intersection. Dr. Alicia Joe is the chief executive

officer of the Cancer Research Institute, one of the oldest non-profits in the world devoted

exclusively to cancer immunology and immunotherapy. She stepped into this

...