Athena Aktipis

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1,334 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 9 Jan

Athena Aktipis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #144 Classic episode – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is a fundamental universal phenomena · 9 Jan 2026 podcast

So I like to kind of think about it in terms of, you know, what are the components of multicellular cooperation that break down in cancer?

And then we can ask, you know, are there parallels to that in, you know, what happens in human societies?

And so if we take the regulation of cell proliferation, there are human societies in which people do regulate how many offspring other people can have.

So we see that.

Now, do we think that that's a good thing or a bad thing?

That's an ethical question.

question um you know whether that's uh you know cooperation um and you know it's also you know on some level i guess it can be interpreted that way it could also be interpreted as like you know authoritarian control that's not cool right so like there's you know like already we're kind of in like oh the body is like a fascist state right like if you start like making you know these these analogies are like oh okay yeah we're on touchy ground already here exactly

That's right.

Yeah.

No questions asked, you know.

I mean, yes and no, right?

I mean, there is some cost, right, to, like, you know, just killing a cell like that.

So, you know, you do have mechanisms to, you know, try to do the DNA repair and, you know, make sure that, like, if it's easy to solve the problem, you know, the cell doesn't get

you know, completely destroyed.

But cells don't have a lot of autonomy.

And, you know, that's a good thing for the function of us as a, you know, unit.

But, you know, if you take really seriously... Not great for every cell.

Yeah, if you take seriously the perspective of the cell, and it's, you know, it's a different story.

If you'll permit me a slight digression.

So I worked on a song, a rap with Baba Brinkman.

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