Sam Harris speaks with Siddhartha Mukherjee about the science of cancer. They discuss the updated edition of The Emperor of All Maladies, whether cancer is one disease or many, why prevention is so hard, inflammation and air pollution as carcinogens, the myth that cell phones cause cancer, liquid biopsies and Bayesian reasoning, immunotherapy and CAR T cells, drug pricing, the promise of AI in drug discovery, the state of American medical science, and other topics.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Song of the Cell; The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; and The Laws of Medicine. He is a Rhodes scholar, an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University, and a cancer physician and researcher. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and others.

Website: SiddharthaMukherjee.com

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/485-the-new-science-of-cancer

#485 - The New Science of Cancer

Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

#485 - The New Science of Cancer