Benjamin Thompson

speaker

746 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Sep

Benjamin Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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Nature Podcast · What counts as a moon? Huge ‘exosatellite’ sparks debate · 22 Jul 2026 podcast

not only refreshing, but at some level astounding. matched

Nature matched

And a transmissible cancer in catfish. matched

I'm Benjamin Thompson. matched

Coming up, the discovery of an exceptionally rare form of cancer in brown bullhead catfish. matched

Right now, though, it's time for the Research Highlights with Sharmini Bundel. matched

Next up on the show this week, I've been finding out about a vanishingly rare form of cancer that's recently been identified in a particular species of fish. matched

Lake Memphra Magog, a large body of water split between Quebec in Canada and Vermont in the northeast US, is a good place to catch brown bullhead catfish that live on the bottom of the lake. matched

But back in 2012, anglers started seeing something strange. matched

Many of the catfish were covered in these odd black lesions. matched

A study showed that these lesions were malignant melanomas, skin cancers, and surveys suggested that roughly one-third of brown bullhead catfish sampled had them. matched

There were understandably concerns, both ecologically and in terms of public health. matched

Could an environmental contaminant or a virus have been the cause? matched

Scientists searched for clues, scientists that included Julie Dragon. matched

Initially, Julie and her colleagues were doing studies looking to see whether something like a cancer-causing virus could be the culprit. matched

The team didn't find anything. matched

But eventually, after sequencing the genomes of individual fish, they found something else. matched

You'd normally expect a cancer cell to broadly look like the organism it was taken from, although with a mutation or series of mutations that caused it to become cancerous. matched

But in this case, the cancers were genetically similar to each other, but not the fish they were taken from. matched

This was a strange and perplexing finding. matched

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