I'm not the only one who thinks we might be totally wrong on what we think chemotherapy is doing. An emerging group of scientist feel that instead of a big, well-defended target where it is hard to find any targets (cellular DNA), chemotherapy instead works on the small, unprotected DNA of mitochondria, practically any bit of which is fragile and likely to cause the cell to explode when it is damaged

The cell's power pack--the mitochondrion--is more like a bacteria than like us in its protein synthesis, DNA synthesis and its membrane. Chemotherapy is toxic to them, and they blow up. Mitochondria are uniquely sensitive since their DNA doesn't repair and needs every single bit of it to be in working order or it blows up. Cancer cells use more energy, their mitochondria are likely more sensitive than non cancer cells. Known genetic defects and mitochondrial poisons produce toxicity that looks like chemotherapy toxicity. Furthermore, when we've looked, we've found these mitochondrial toxins work on cancer. Why not look at all of them especially dinitrophenol which has been used in people and is a mitochondrial toxin in a way that other chemotherapy is not. It's likely to be a new (toxic) cure for cancer.

We can pretty safely kill microorganisms that are not very much like us be it ticks, typhoid, or trichomonas by simply targeting things they got that we don't. This isn't going to be true if it is our cells that are dividing too fast. Therefore, we are going to have toxicity from a cure for cancer. On the other hand, the toxicity we see from all those treatments we've gotten sure as heck seem to imply a particular site where they're working that we haven't really gone after. And this implies at least 3-6 new drugs for cancer.. that we already have and just haven't tested.

We rely on drugs doing more good than bad. If a drug is an assassin, it is helpful if it can find the right target. Generally this works a lot better if the target is very dissimilar to us. With germs and parasites that is easier than if it is our own cells even if they be cancer cells.

The first epiphany is that removal of a negative is every bit as reinforcing as giving a positve. We notice the feelings of others. Therefore leaving those who are going through something unpleasant feels good and reinforces being around them (and then leaving!)

The brain processes information. This produces biases which are noticesable through errors that are produced. Most of these have to do with the limits on how much information we can keep in consciousness at one time (working memory). Another set of biases occur because we are social/tribal animals.

It is because it vastly augments thinking ability. Someday soon people are going to notice that augmented intelligence is far superior to artificial intelligence. For example, while machines can just now sorta kinda be able to beat humans in Chess and Go, if you have a human able to draw on computer suggestions, we do better than the human or computer alone.

This is a continuation of the previous podcast on energy and entropy. If you want to have net carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the ground how do you do it without using even more energy (and carbon)? Harness waste (and entropy) and put carbon back. Starting with poo. This was actually in a little book called the Bible. Heh, who knew? Well, everyone who saw soil exhaustion ruin every ancient civilization but ones where rivers dumped crap back into the soil after bad farming had dumped it into the river.

This is a bit that didn't make it into the podcast. Cognitive science at Carnegie Mellon University found that linkages were important in the meaning of information. They built the concept of the semantic map. But they didn't quite get that it had to include hierarchical abstractions and self-reference. These make a computer nutso by breaking the Godel Incompleteness features.

Deep brain structures take information and react to it faster than you can think. All the information your senses get from the environment are predigested and what you should see and how you should feel about it are fed to you based on prior learned responses. Drugs of abuse short-circuit them. Some ways to reprogram them are given