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Globe Trotting For Science with Christopher Loffredo · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're joined by Dr.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Christopher Lofredo, a cancer epidemiologist at Georgetown University, whose career has taken him all over the world in pursuit of better cancer prevention and research.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: His new book, Globe Trotting for Science, Tales of Fieldwork, Folklore, and Fumbling Through Foreign Lands, blends science, travel, and some truly unforgettable stories from the field.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's part adventure, part education, and part comedy as well.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_04: Well, hello there, sir.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: Nice to meet you.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: How are you today?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm fine, thank you.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: I am very good.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'm excited to have this conversation with you.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: I love the title, Globe Trotting for Science.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: How fun is that?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_04: That's already fun.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: That already takes like the oh now I gotta learn something.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: I hope nobody feels like that, but but uh yeah, such a great title.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_04: And I love so you take readers on this like whirlwind journey uh from Egypt to Asia and Africa and all over the place in the pursuit of answers that could change the future of medicine.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of cool.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm a modest person in general, but I have to say, yes, in my heart, I feel like it's cool, and I feel really blessed to have had these opportunities to go all over.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, a lot of people say no.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of my colleagues in science, given such an opportunity to go to another country and do oracles, you know, and and partly maybe a little fear a bit, and there's always a part of that for me too, but also, you know, being in our comfort zones and to do this kind of work like I've done on the global stage, you have to extend yourself a little bit and get out of that comfort zone and be open to new, you know, experiences.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's my the pattern of my whole career is you know, finding out about an opportunity to do something in some place and then just sort of diving in and seeing how it would be.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for for uh your comment about the title.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of fun to think about titles, yeah.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh to think about the illustrations too.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of fun to take these stories and to make them try to come to life.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: I love that you love the process of the book writing too, because there's some people, you know, sometimes I'll ask somebody like what was the worst part?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_04: What was the best part?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: And for me, I always kind of say like everything's the best part.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like I love all the parts of it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_04: So I love to hear that you enjoyed, you know, the different aspects.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: Some people just want to sit down and write the book.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: When you're having fun, I think it shows.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're a performer and you're loving what you do, it shows.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, this is how I approached the book.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was not a chore, it was fun.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if I wasn't in the mood on a particular day to do some writing, there was so much fact checking just to make sure I found things right.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, my notebook says we went to uh St.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Petersburg.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Is that really what we did?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Is that yeah, just just going back into notes and going online and looking for things.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So there was always something fun to think about or to add to it, or work one day with the illustrations, which my editor Terry did such a fine job with in this book.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh up in my view, kids, you know, love pictures.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you cannot write a child's book without without good pictures.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: But a book like this, um, in order not to be scary with that word science in the title about driving for science.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to make it fun.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm glad that you appreciated the fun that I had with it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and you touched on something that it was making me think about it, like uh typically when we and especially children probably think about scientists, we have them mentally locked in this one lane, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: Where like you're in a lab, in a lab coat, and you know, you clock in and you're there all day staring in, you know, microscopes and all those types of things.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you kind of flip it on it on its head, really, and you're like, oh no, no, no, there's there's quite an adventure happening here.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I know that's not necessarily the norm.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_04: Can you talk to that a little bit?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like, tell tell us how how you got started, how you got on this path, and just I want to know the whole adventure.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, tell me the whole thing.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was once that scientists in the white lab coat, in a laboratory, because my my PhD, my dissertation work involved doing experiments on the lab bench and I was looking at genetic influences.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And but I learned a lot from that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I learned the value of you know designing research carefully, a lot of quality control at every step.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: There were days when nothing would work, and I'd have to try to figure out is it the temperature today, is it this enzyme that's expired?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is it you know, eliminating all these possible things?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: It taught me so much that really could be translated into life skills.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to be at the bench to want to have, say, a study on liver cancer like I have done in Egypt and in Thailand, um, that's well designed and well thought through and has had a lot of input from different experts.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, you asked sort of what this journey was like.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it started for me with Australia.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I was looking at different um programs to apply to for graduate school.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: As a biology major coming out of my undergraduate work at Hartwick College, yay, Hartwick, wonderful place.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I was looking for where to go.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I wanted to do maybe a master's degree and a PhD.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: I like zoology a lot.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I was interviewing, and this guy at the University of Maryland named Dr.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jerry Gorgio, I talked about in the book, he had a desire for a graduate student to join his group and go to Australia and work on Bauerbergs of all things.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: I knew what they were, but I really didn't know what this work would be like.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, wow, what an opportunity if he's got you know travel funds for us to go there and do this work.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds really interesting.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I jumped in with both feet and had to set up a field camp and had to manage a team of people.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: I had no training for any of that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you know, you jump in and you do it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And my own brother, who was in college at the time that I was in Australia, he read my book and said, I can't believe you did these things at the age of 22.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_04: I was gonna ask you how old you were.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: 22.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he said, but you figured it out.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's true.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: I figured it out as I went along, and it didn't bother me that I didn't know things.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I knew I could figure stuff out.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I was smart enough to, you know, figure out how to open a bank account on my own in Australia, how to get the car serviced.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: I figured I could work my way through those things.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it set up a pattern for me, though, because that sort of fearlessness.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Jump in and try this new thing.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is a thing I tell a lot of my students.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Don't have a tunnel vision about your career.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, be open to things that come along, opportunities.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Explore them.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: If it doesn't work, all right, go back to your path that you thought you had for yourself.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: But be open to things uh that could change your life potentially.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know if you don't try.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, set up a pattern for me with with different studies than in different countries.
• 6:55
  unknown: Wow.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that is just incredible.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_04: And and I love I love the message underneath all of that, right on top of all of it, really, is to, you know, just just do do the things in spite of fear.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody's afraid, you know, everybody's everything is a little scary when it's unfamiliar.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: We talked about that before we even started.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: You know, everything is a little bit scary when it's unfamiliar, but um when you take that leap.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_04: And and I love that leap of faith in yourself as well, that you know, that I can figure it out attitude.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: And it's so true.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: If people, uh particularly the young people, you know, you said you were 22, uh, at that age, when when I think of the 22-year-olds that I I know right now, they're you know, they're they're not like that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a generalization, that's not the the rule, you know, but that is representative of a lot.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: Now, you so I don't know where you're gonna tell me where about in your career um you went into being a cancer epidemiologist.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_04: I just want to I just want to pat myself on the back for not mispronouncing that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: Can I have a moment?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, tell me tell me a little bit about that.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: So having you know, returned from my Australian adventures and uh went back to University of Maryland at College Park where I was enrolled and finished my master's thesis, completed it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Then I thought, okay, what next?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I decided I might just take a little time off and try to figure things out.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so in the newspaper, you know, I was I was desperate enough for a job to just look in the employment pages in the Washington Post, because I live in the Washington, DC area, and I saw an advertisement at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore that talked about a data analyst.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, that's one of my skill sets.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I came back with reams of data from working in Australia in the field, and I learned how to do data analysis and I learned statistics, and so I called up and it was a life-changing moment.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, at that point, I was getting married, I wanted a job, I wanted an income.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: And being a master's level um zoologist, I was speaking out a living, doing some scientific editing, doing writing some articles for children's nature magazines and things like that, but it wasn't gonna pay the bills for a couple.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I got this job, and I have to say, I loved it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was working for a pediatrician at the medical school, and she had started an enormous study, the biggest that was ever done in history, on families that had a baby born with a heart defect.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And she compared this group of about 4,000 babies to a control group of babies who had been born healthy and fine, and there were interviews done with the parents, and my job was to try to sort through that and see what was different.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Was it something about mother's illness?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Was it something about the environment that these uh families were living in?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Were there genetic things happening?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was the data analyst, but I loved the field of epidemiology because it's concerned with what are the causes of human diseases, and then knowing that, how do we product?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: How do we make life easier?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: How do we, you know, control epidemics and things like that?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: I thought the subject matter was fascinating and I wanted to do a PhD in it, and that's wow, wow.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, what incredibly valuable work, first of all.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, second of all, your attention to detail, like you're obviously a guy, you know, numbers is your happy place, or at least one of your happy places.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Does it come naturally to you?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: Were you always that kid?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like growing up?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was, I was.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I had wonderfully supportive parents and relatives, and my godmother Aunt Teresa, bless her, she passed, but she was always buying me books.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And she noticed that I love nature.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was a typical boy who liked to go out and turn over rocks and find the bugs underneath.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And she would buy me these little field guides for kids that would say, you know, this is a this is a larva, and this is a red ant and this is a carpenter ant.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I just loved it and wasn't nurtured in that way by, you know, all kinds of aunts and uncles and cousins who encouraged me to be that kind of kid in the nature and love to explore.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I would collect things and number them carefully.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I found out from somebody you should have a little notebook that said, okay, it was in New Hampshire on the 9th of May in 1964, you know, when I found this fossil and such and such a place.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had like this little scientific notebook at the age of eight.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I was always that person.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's so cool.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_04: Did you know when you were taking your notes, when you were doing all of these things, did you know, was this a planned book, or was this a wow, I have all of this.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: I bet this could be a book.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like, how did the book come to life?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was the second way.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: I really I had been told by my parents over and over again, you should write a book.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, all these stories.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: And see, whenever I traveled, I wrote letters back home to mom and dad and my godmother, uh, to my wife back home, to my nieces and nephews, lots of postcards out from all over the world, like where's Uncle Chris today?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: kind of thing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And people saved them, which I never expected.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why, but out of the blue one day, my mom handed me this raft of letters that she had saved and said, Here, it's time for you to type these.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: I talking like that, wow, armed with this and my memory, and all my photographs, which are my trigger.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if I've taken a photo and I put it in an album or something, or I've organized it, you know, on the computer, the act of doing that creates a memory for me.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like a sort of a muscle memory thing.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so armed with all of that stuff, I thought, wow, I could really turn all of this into a book.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it was never planned.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was just something that at some point when things started accumulating.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was also getting older, you know, I was in my 50s at that point, and I thought, what if I start to forget some of this stuff?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't that be bad if it didn't get written down before I've gotten many details?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it kind of all came together, and I had the opportunity to do a sabbatical.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is a tradition that's in universities, you know, because I'm a university professor.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was eligible to take a paid sabbatical for six months, and uh it was my mission to write this book.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: So perfect.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: And that actually answered my my book, my author nerd question was how long did it take you to write the book?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: Because I always I always love asking that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_04: How long was it from the beginning to publishing?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually a lot more than than just the six month sabbatical.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: I I finished with um, I think all the way up through when I began the studies in Thailand.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: And this was 2016 when I wrote sort of what I thought was the first complete draft of the book.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I didn't completely finish it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so then I thought, well, I know I'm going to Thailand next year to begin this new adventure.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I should wait another year until I got some stories from that and I'll put that in.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then came an opportunity to do work in Russia.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, well, I'll wait another year and I'll see if there's any, you know, worthy material there for the book.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I finished in 2024.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, I love your patience.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: I love your patience.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_04: I'm so impatient.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I want to write if I want to write it, I want to write it five minutes ago and be done.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_04: I love that you waited and you had the foresight to realize, like, wait, there is a lot more.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in a way, it I wish I hadn't waited.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think 10 years ago, the business of publishing was still in the older mode.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: This is not my first book.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: I've actually published medical, medical type textbook works before, where there's a room full of people at a publishing house who are doing the typesetting, who are going over your book with a fine-toothed gum.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're in the age of AI.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the tools are vastly different, and the whole business has shifted.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it was scary to me and difficult to understand at first.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the AI tools, even a year ago, are not as good as they are now.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: So true.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, yeah, my publisher used some of them, and you know, it was a learning curve, it really was.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: So in a way, yeah, I do wish I kind of had kind of done it under the old system, which I knew.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: But under this brave new world, we have fabulous tools for illustrating, for example.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: And all of us in my book because those are AI tools, and I never would have known on my own how to do that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: So in a way, I really did benefit from the AI revolution by coming on the scene now.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: And and I totally get what you're saying when I first started writing.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_04: Same thing, you know, everything was pretty traditional.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: AI was I, you know, it was really not, it wasn't a common conversation, it certainly was an off conversation, but uh nothing, nothing like today.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, like everything else that humans get a hold of, I'm sure you can agree with me.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's there's terrible and there's wonderful, and you know, the only thing that ever ruins anything good is people.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: But when you're using it for for good purposes and and to add value to the world, um, it it's just tremendous.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: I I I am a fan in that regard, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: Let let's kind of get into like the meat of the book a little bit.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I and I love this.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Your book mixes serious science with humor.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_04: Humor is my favorite thing ever.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, was that intentional from the start, or did the funny moments just kind of happen naturally?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like I feel like this is an extension of your personality.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it probably is, but in a way, too, we're talking about people.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the lessons for me is people are people.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Whether we're talking about at Slactini in Southern Africa or Brazil or anywhere else.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's we're more alike than we're different.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so people like to tell stories and people like to laugh with each other.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And scientists are the same.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, but we're just people too.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the key lessons for me in this whole lifelong journey is you have to get to know your team in the other country or here, wherever you are.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: You have to get to know your team and your people.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the best ways to do that is you take a coffee break together and you talk about family and foods that you love and the relative is driving you crazy.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about anything but the science.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have room for that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're already gonna do that later today, right?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: But then the dinner with your colleagues or watch, you know, you've got to get people out of the lab, out of the hospital, out of the clinic, wherever they are, out of the governmental office, get people sitting and talking with each other, and the humor just pours out because they realize, oh, this Dr.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Chris from the States, he's not so bad, you know, he's like one of us.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I've always tried to be that kind of person who listen, that that's so important to go to someplace, not saying, Oh, look at everything that's wrong here.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: There is a lot wrong.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot that has to be worked on.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I learned that it's better to say, okay, what are the strengths too?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: There are places, there are people, there are institutions, there are strong points that we could build on to address those problems.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's I don't know how I figured that out along the way, but I did somewhere along the way.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think using humor um to break the ice with people, to get to know people better, to break down those barriers, it came kind of naturally to me.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And when other people told me that my stories were funny, it sort of opened up a door for me to say, well, let me let me keep being this way and not be stiff and formal with people, you know, in in these scientific pursuits.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: I so much fun.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been really productive, I have to say.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sort of validates that I was right about that approach.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: You're totally right, totally right.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: It just just like, oh, absolutely, you know, it's I I don't know if it's like a rare quality, but it's such a great quality to be able to have both like the the analytical mind and the intuitive mind too, like just to be able to intuitively understand how to communicate with people to get the best out of them and yourself and the situation, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, uh kudos to you for for just, you know, it sounds like instinctively just kind of knowing that and figuring it out.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's wonderful.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: I have great mentors too, I have to say.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: I the the pediatrician, Dr.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Charlotte Ferenc at the University of Maryland, she passed away about uh eight years ago.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I learned so much from her, and a lot of it had to do with taking care of your people from her point of view.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, she was the big queen and we're all her team working for her, but she took care of us and she fought battles for us with administration and things like that, and make sure we got raises when other people weren't getting them and things like that.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it the value of taking care of people and looking after their emotional needs and sitting down with them.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: She, you know, even she was this high and mighty person, but she would just bring in her bad lunch and sit down with you at your desk and chat.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I my all my mentors have been that way.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I gravitated to them, seemed down to earth like that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: But I learned these lessons from people who liked mixing the science with fun.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me, if you will, if there is one particular place that you've been or one particular story that stands out to you most of all.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I know it's probably in the book, so I don't I won't ask you to tell anything, but give us a little tease of one of your favorite moments.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, gosh, a lot of them were in Australia, and it's because it was that formative experience for me, but they're scattered through all the books.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: In Australia, I was with a team, but for part of the time I had to stay there alone.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: People had to go back to the United States to do various things, and and I was the one paid to be there and managed the camp and everything.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: But there were these wonderful, and this was in the outback.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: But nearby, the nearest neighbors, because I was in a state park, but just outside the boundaries were farm families.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Three of them.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I got to know them all really well to the point where the two grandmothers in these families more or less adopted me, and I always called them Australian grandmothers.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the cooking wars.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I I really did not, this sounds like I'm manipulative, but it started out quite innocent.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: One of the two grandmothers invited me to dinner.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when I was alone, it was a wonderful thing, went had dinner with her family, but she sent me back to my little camp with a tin of cookies that she had done.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, fine.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the other grandmother, grandma number two, she found out that grandma number one had done this, and they were rivals in many ways, these two grandmothers.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so grandma number two invites me to dinner.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: And during the dinner, she said, Oh, I heard you were at so-and-so's house for dinner.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, was it did you have a good time?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I did.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she sent me home with cookies.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't say that at the end of the later, but grandma number two quickly put together a little basket of cookies that she had in the house and thus began the cookie works.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that at this point I didn't know what I was doing.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: So back to grandma number one, you know, how was dinner with grandma number two?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it was great.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And she sent me home with uh quite a selection of cookies.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know we should have time to make them all.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: So funny.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Next thing you know, grandma number one now is with a cake and sent me home with a whole cake.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I kept that going for a while before they talked to each other.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's awesome.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: Thank goodness you were only 22 because you probably like your metabolism was probably fierce and didn't even fade you.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so now at the heart of everything, of course, is cancer research.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what motivates you to keep doing this kind of work year after year?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: The need.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Many of the cancers I work on, I all uh all of them.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, um, have some positive points in the sense that science is discovering new and better treatments with love side effects.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: You may have heard of immunotherapy, that's a big thing that's changing the face of cancer treatment, but still there's so much suffering.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: And my point of view on cancer has always been okay, we need these advances in medicine, but why not stop it from ever taking hold in the first place?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: That would be so much better.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what's driven me is liver cancer, which one of the one of the major ones I work on, uh kills more people around the world than any cancer except lung cancer.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: I had no idea.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they have a much bigger burden than we do in the United States.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um that that cancer is not easy to manage medically because people have no symptoms in the early stage.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's no good screening test for it, and people don't even know they have it until very late stage.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not very treatable, and they got it because of underlying diseases like alcoholism or hepatitis B or C.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: By the time they get to cancer, their bodies are already wrecked with the effects of those diseases, and so it's not easy to treat them, and they may die of all this other stuff, and it's not actually the cancer that kills them.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, again, why aren't we preventing alcoholism?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't we preventing or immunizing against hepatitis B, which has a Greek vaccine available?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, to me, that urgent need for prevention and the fact that in different countries of the world, there are different factors driving the liver cancer epidemic.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: If it was hepatitis C.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: In Thailand, they also have hepatitis C and B, but they also eat fish that's infested with liver fluke.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's in the raw fish, not sushi, but the fish that they catch, and it's a staple of the diet, especially for poor people in some areas.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, these little silvery fish are infested with this parasite, has eggs in it, and they swallow it, the eggs hatch, and these little worm things go down to their gallbladder and and cause a certain kind of cancer there.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you would think, well, if they knew this, wouldn't they stop eating this fish?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we had to do the research to show that really was true.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: That that was the major thing driving their epidemic.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: But then it's like, well, now what do we do about it?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do we just say now shame on you, stop eating that fish?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's not going to work.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's really simplistic.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to villages and through travelers, you know, I asked a lot of questions about this.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: You've heard of this.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we've heard of this.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: The doctors tell us about this, but you're still eating it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we love this, we don't want to give this up.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then you think, well, you know, switch to a different kind of fish.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: No, there really isn't anything as these little silver fish.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: And for poor people, this is probably their major protein.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have eggs, they don't have cattle, they don't have a lot of pigs.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if this is taken away, what are they?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: So then we come to can we cook this fish?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because that'll destroy these eggs, and it will be perfectly safe.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm thinking now, okay, we need to do think about design some kind of intervention that will move people toward cooking or fermenting.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: They like to ferment the fish.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is some vinegar, cilantro, and chili, uh chili paste in there.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's which would also kill the parasites, it would kill them.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and lots and lots of bulbs.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Filantro smells wonderful.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I wouldn't dare eat it at this point.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: But that fermentation will kill the eggs.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can move a little bit from where we are now, which is the raw fish, towards the fermented, that's culturally valued anyway, and get advocacy going.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I um you'll read it, you'll see in the book, I was so fortunate to get involved in a project sponsored by the royal family of Thailand.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: And to have been invited many times to the Royal Palace and to present the results of our work.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to see if we can get some advocacy from um, you know, one of the princesses in the royal family who's a uh a health scientist, and say, Princess Chulaborn, would you consider doing some public education message on this?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, lending your good name.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: She's a very influential person.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: If we can have that kind of advocacy within the culture, that would maybe help also to create this change.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just an example of why I think research has to see what is the problem, number one.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then number two, knowing the problem, investigate it thoroughly enough to know what are those angles and what can be done for the prevention side.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I really look forward to the continuation of that story.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll have to write another book.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, you will.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: I was you took the words right out of my mother.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_04: So I said, What is the next book?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_04: Let's go.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: I need I need the rest of the story.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: I know I have a lot of stories that I need to put in book number one that I'll go back to.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then the adventures have continued.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this book doesn't cover Brazil, where I had a recent project going on on childhood cancer.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Very fascinating story.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I went to Esquatini in Botswana in Africa uh to look at a problem there.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's these stories to tell.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I have enough material for another book.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you do.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_04: So so, first of all, it's just such incredible work that you're doing and so just just so amazing.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_04: But it's got to be so uh amazing for you to see not necessarily the end of the story, but you know, that one you're talking about where you see the results of your work and you see the changes being made um in the lives uh of these people, that's gotta be one of the most gratifying things ever, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: It it is, and it makes all the blood, sweat, and tears worth it.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: And the length of time this takes is not to be believed.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's scary for young people coming into the field.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I say I had to wait 10 years to see Egypt implement better laws, better controls on infection control and on uh tobacco smoking regulation, it took 10 years.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'm a patient person, as you've already mentioned.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: That didn't throw me off.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's still, you know, I wish the pace of change was faster, but it it's just the reality we live in.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: They're going through very slowly, and hearts and minds take a long time to change, but they change.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're quite right.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's really that's a kind of a gratification.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's gotta be uh it's gotta be tough though, in the middle of that process, seeing it so clearly, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_04: So you're seeing the problem and the solution so clearly, but it's like you know, hitting your head against a brick wall, trying to get the people who need to hear the message to run with that message.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: And you you gave so much grace in your response to that and seeing so much more of the picture uh with the the fish.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, I'm sorry, that was Thailand, was it Thailand or in Thailand?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_04: Like when you gave so much grace to those people and understanding their limitations and their situation instead of just being frustrated with them.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: And I, you know, just so many valuable lessons here.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, which leads me to I'm I'm who did you have in mind with this book?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like who is your target audience?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, to me, it sounds like everybody, like everybody should be reading this.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm giving a plug right here.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody should read this book.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_04: So, okay, your age or something.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: People who love travel would would love this.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: It is science, not heavy science, but there's a thread of science in it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: It is a bit of culture and and uh art and architecture that's in there too.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's humor, for sure it's humor.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's you know, a cornerstone of my approach to the book was to put in all those funny stories because it's really what kept me going, you know, on a dark rainy night, stopping someplace and the planes are canceled and all that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: To remember those stories and to treasure those stories, yeah, that kept me going through some pretty dark moments.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: But I I this is a a question like who's who are the readers I wanted to reach?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote this for myself and my family originally, and then I thought, well, no, that I think there's actually enough in here that more people than the general public might like to read such a thing.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I I've gotten feedback from people I barely know.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Nice, you know, who said, Oh my gosh, I loved your book.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: I laughed out loud.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the person who said that to me the first time, I thought I did it.
• 30:05
  unknown: Yes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: I got this humorless person, it's a scientist, I'm not naming names, um, who loved it and said that they were reading it and they just burst out loud and like the family said, What's that book you're reading?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I didn't expect that, that it would be that universal.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: So now we gotta you know, gotta spread the word on this.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So absolutely for having me on your show.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness, it's such a it's such a pleasure and an honor.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm so I'm so glad that we got to have this conversation and and it doesn't matter what your interest is, this book is your interest.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Don't worry about my own science.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Read this, read the subtitle that's about the field work and the folklore and fumbling through foreign lands.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's it right there.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, do me one last favor.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: Will you tell everyone where they can find your book?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_04: If you have any book signing events, anything going on, a website, tell them anywhere they can find you in your work.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right now we're on Amazon, and you can find my book there and also on BarnesandNoble.com.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Barnes and Noble um locally in Bowie, where I live, is doing a book signing event for me this summer.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have the date yet.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that will be posted soon on Christopher AlbertLafredo.com.
• 31:14
  unknown: Perfect.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: This was such a joy and an honor.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you again for joining me today.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_04: I know my audience is going to absolutely love you.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: You are welcome and thank you.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: All right, my friends.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you all for joining us.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: We will see you in the next episode.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: Take care.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a story worth sharing.
• 31:33
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• 31:34
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