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- [00:00]
Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
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- [01:05]
Dr. Alicia Jo
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- [01:07]
Host
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Dr. Alicia Jo
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Host
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Dr. Alicia Jo
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Host
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- [01:26]
Dr. Alicia Jo
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Host
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- [01:35]
Jenny Garth
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- [02:07]
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- [02:48]
Host
Welcome to another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. This is a really personal episode for me. My friend last year was diagnosed with cancer and she's only 30. It's stage four colon cancer and through my efforts to help her, through her treatment, I met Dr. Alicia Joe, who. Who is the youngest CEO of the cancer Research Institute and one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. I asked Alicia to join me on this chat so that we could bring this information to you. The same information she's helped me understand, to guide my friend through her treatment. And my friend is no longer on palliative care. She is back in active treatment, moving towards surgery and actually living her life now. So I'm very excited for you to meet Dr. Jo. Oh, hey.
- [03:40]
Dr. Alicia Jo
You're here.
- [03:41]
Host
Thank you for doing this.
- [03:43]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
- [03:45]
Host
I want to introduce the world to you. So, Dr. Alicia.
- [03:48]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Jo.
- [03:49]
Host
So we met because I. I was lucky enough to attend your talk with how many people? 15 people?
- [03:57]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, something like that. Yeah. It was a really fun night a couple of weeks ago. Really trying to share what we're doing at the Cancer Research Institute and share some knowledge about cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
- [04:09]
Host
I thought it was great, and I adore Jennifer Seegerstrom, who put it together, and I think she's a hoot as well. So it was a good group. But I. You taught me in that time things I had never. Things I just did not know about cancer.
- [04:27]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Oh, I appreciate that. I think it's the thing about cancer also, is that what we know about it has become more and more. There's so many new studies coming out, there's so many new treatments, new diagnostics, and I think that's actually quite hard for most folks to keep up with. So I try to distill it in such a way that hopefully, you know, you can take away a few tidbits.
- [04:47]
Host
And that's what happened for me.
- [04:49]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Good. I appreciate that.
- [04:50]
Host
You know, I've. I've known about radiation. I've known about chemotherapy. I have not really understood immunotherapy. So I think where I would love to start is my friend is 30, and she has stage four colon cancer. And you were wonderful enough to speak with her. I'm wondering if you can share what you shared with her.
- [05:17]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. So cancer is a very individual journey for each patient. And I think it really kind of depends when you're speaking to a patient, where they are in their treatment and then where they are in their journey in terms of what resources they're looking for. In this particular case, this is a young woman at the age of 30 who was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer, which, of course, is a very scary diagnosis at this point. I think there's managing multiple different Lines of treatment. With colorectal cancer, we typically do look to use all four pillars of treatment to try to go after this cancer. We use surgery, we use chemotherapy, we use radiation, and we use immunotherapy. They all have slightly different mechanisms. But ultimately the goal, of course, is to eliminate and eradicate the cancer. I wanted to make sure that she understood what options were available to her. And especially for some patients, especially stage 4 patients, oftentimes clinical trials are an option. So I wanted to understand if she had already explored those options. And there's actually a whole other side of this, which is that when a patient is undergoing treatment, especially if they're undergoing multiple lines of treatment, they actually have to manage the complexity of working with their doctor and their health care system to ensure that it gets paid for. And sometimes we don't talk about this, but it can be one of the sort of biggest burdens for cancer patients. So it's also understanding that, you know, it's not just the chemotoxicity, it's the financial toxicity. And so those are some of the things that we talked about.
- [06:55]
Host
Can you say more about that? And we don't necessarily have to get political, but how, how has this current administration changed the access to care for cancer patients?
- [07:10]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, it's a really great question and I'm glad you asked it. So I think there are a couple of things that have been happening. So in the past several months, we have seen that there are proposed budget cuts to the NIH as well as the National Science Foundation, NIH's National Institutes of Health. These are some pretty big, long standing institutions that have really supported science and medicine within the United States when it comes to access to care. A couple of things we've noticed. The NIH itself is responsible for, for sponsoring and actually even conducting several large clinical trials in all different disease areas. We have seen that the NIH sponsored trials right now are kind of in this pause state. They haven't been canceled, but they are kind of in this indefinite pause state. And I think the question for cancer patients, especially folks who are stage four and are looking at a pretty scary prognosis, time is something that has a lot of value, and having to wait several months can make a real difference in terms of the outcomes. Unfortunately, we are seeing some patients stuck in this waiting loop to see if these trials are going to start up again.
- [08:31]
Host
How long do you think the waiting loop will continue, I guess, or be extended?
- [08:37]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I don't really know. I would say that especially for the NIH sponsored trials, the ones that is actually conducted by the nih. It's really uncertain because of course, there have been a lot of staffing changes at the nih. There are a lot of clinical trials that are sponsored by private institutions or by public universities. These are drug company sponsored trials or ones that are being conducted, multi center trials that are being conducted at academic cancer centers. Many of those are still ongoing. And so generally, I would say if you are in a waiting line for an NIH trial, it's probably worthwhile also to explore what your other options are. Oftentimes there are other clinical trials that might be available to you. I think the hardship here though, of course, is that depending on what the trial is that you're trying to get into, they might be recruiting in a specific geography and so they might not be recruiting in your area. It might mean you need to travel. So it becomes quite difficult and quite a burden for patients to be able to find a trial that is in their area that is recruiting for patients like them that they feel like they would like to be a part of. Actually, one of the things we do at the Cancer Research Institute is we have a clinical trial finder. And what we try to do is help you navigate this. So, you know, based off of your disease, we look at, you know, some of the biomarkers, stage of disease, history of treatment, and we try to help you find a trial that is in your area. We do have some patients that say that they're open to travel, but obviously that can be quite a burden for some. Some patients.
- [10:13]
Host
Right. Okay, so this is amazing. So, so what do people do? Tell me like, okay, I just found out I have stage four cancer. Yeah, I'm listening to this podcast. What's the website? Tell me, walk me through all these steps. Yeah, well, I have, let's say I have an IQ of 95 in a third grade reading level.
- [10:32]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I mean, I think the conversation actually starts first with your oncologists, of course. And I think this is where we do need to have our trust in our medical team. My first advice that I always give patients is that make sure you find an oncologist that you feel like you trust. And it is a relationship, it's going to be a long term relationship and one that is very important to you, the patient. And so make sure that you have a good rapport with that doctor, that you feel like they really understand where you're coming from. Obviously they are going to try to optimize for your treatment. But you need to also be clear about the things that you Want as you are undergoing treatment, what are you optimizing for? Are you optimizing for the quality of your life? Are you wanting to know what types of side effects? What's more important to you? If we're talking about sort of stage four and potentially getting into experimental therapies, what's your priority in terms of how you feel versus getting onto the most innovative or promising trial? So I think these are things that you do need to talk to your doctor about. And then as a resource, the Cancer Research Institute. Our website is cancerresearch.org we do have a clinical trial finder and matcher, and we'll help you find a clinical trial that will be recruiting for patients like you. We specialize in immunotherapy trials. So immunotherapy is a type of cancer therapy that actually activates your immune system to go and target and eliminate the cancer. And so there are many different types of immunotherapy, and we can help match you to one of those trials. But I would start with talking to your oncologist.
- [12:08]
Host
So am I correct? And if I rephrase this, chemotherapy kills cancer, but immunotherapy teaches the cancer to kill itself.
- [12:19]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, that's very close. So chemotherapy actually is really interesting. Chemotherapy, we use molecular mechanisms to actually try to go after cells that are dividing very quickly. So tumor cells, cancer cells, are in this category. These are cells that are dividing very quickly. And so what we do is we chemically sort of poison these proliferative mechanisms. We're trying to go after cells that divide very quickly. We're trying to kill off those cells in that way. Chemotherapy does target those cancer cells. Chemotherapy does also, for that reason, have side effects for other fast dividing cells in your body. That includes, for example, your hair follicles. So that's another place where you have a lot of division happening. Your hair is always growing, and then also your gastrointestinal tract. So sort of your GI system, the lining of your intestines, that's also a place where those cells turn over very quickly. In fact, every week or so, you have new cells in your GI tract. So oftentimes with chemotherapy, you end up with side effects like your hair falling out or experiencing that sort of nausea or those GI symptoms. That's actually why those side effects are associated with chemotherapy. Immunotherapy is different. Instead of treating the cancer cells or trying to go after the cancer cells, immunotherapy is actually trying to treat your immune system. So the underlying idea here is that your immune system is billions of cells in your body that are primed to go after and eliminate when you have a bacterial infection or a viral infection. So when you get the common cold, when you get the flu, your immune system is activated. And we know that you feel really bad for a little while, but usually within a week or so, you're feeling a lot better. So how do we get this system, the immune system, to actually recognize cancer as a sort of foreign entity that needs to be eliminated. And so that's actually what immunotherapy is trying to do, is actually trying to activate your immune system to recognize the cancer and go after that cancer.
- [14:15]
Host
How do you. How do you do it? Yeah, Tisha, I know this is like really getting in the weeds, but this is. This is your bread and butter.
- [14:22]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah. So it's actually pretty fascinating because as you can imagine, your immune system has a lot of different functions. From the moment that you're born, your immune system has started to work. And we always talk about building up immunity over the course of your lifetime. Every time you encounter new viruses, new bacteria, each time you see something like that, your immune system actually starts to learn and recognize those foreign pathogens. That's why, actually, if you have a newborn, you have to get a lot of vaccinations because you're teaching the immune system right away. But also you'll notice that your kid gets sick a lot. In fact, your kid gets sick a lot between the ages of one and let's call it four, your kid is constantly with a sniffly nose. And that's because your kid's immune system is actually learning that whole time about all of these different viruses. And the more that your immune system learns, the next time that same virus or bacteria comes back, you actually have pre programmed immune cells that now recognize that and will go after it and oftentimes will eliminate it before you even feel any symptoms. That's also why as kids grow older, they don't get sick as much as. But there's sort of this sort of fine line between your immune system recognizing things that are foreign and then making sure that your immune system doesn't attack your normal cells. Because as you can imagine, if that happens, that's what autoimmune disease is. And then also your immune system is actually going after your own cells, and that's not a good thing. So what that means is that your immune system actually has this interesting balance where it gets turned on when it sees something that it thinks is a foreign attacking agent, and then it's actually silenced to Ensure it doesn't go after your own cells. Now, cancer cells are really interesting because all cancer cells start out as normal cells. In fact, what we all agree on at this point is that all cancer actually starts as one cell that accumulates a ton of mutations and then eventually gets out of control and grows into a tumor. At the beginning, your immune system doesn't recognize that cell because that cell was a normal cell. But at some point, that cell becomes so different from normal it starts to look incredibly different that your immune system should be able to see it. What we found is that what we actually have to do for immunotherapy is we actually have to block this, what's called a checkpoint. It's actually these proteins that keep your immune system in check. We actually have to block that checkpoint in order for the immune system to recognize the tumor. And that was sort of the groundbreaking revelation that we realized in the field about 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And there was all of this theory that if we could block this checkpoint and kind of unblind the immune system, that the immune system would naturally be able to see the cancer and then go and eliminate it. And that's actually worked. So in some cancers like melanoma, which is an aggressive form of skin cancer, we've seen dramatic changes in outcomes for patients in it used to be a 15% likelihood of survival for a stage 4 melanoma cancer patients. These days that is getting up to close to 60%. If it's stage four diagnosis, we're actually talking cures, not simply just living with your disease.
- [17:34]
Host
Oh, wow. Wow.
- [17:36]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah.
- [17:38]
Host
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
- [17:43]
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- [18:42]
Jenny Garth
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- [19:12]
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- [20:12]
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- [21:12]
Host
So that brings me to another question. I have you Know, since this is intentionally disturbing podcast.
- [21:17]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Sure.
- [21:19]
Host
The statistics that you shared when we met, they were disturbing to me. It seems like younger people are getting cancer. I was wondering if you could speak a bit to that.
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Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah. There have been these studies that are ongoing throughout multiple decades looking at the incidence of many of the common cancer types. Every year, we look back at the last year that we have data for and ask ourselves, what are some changes in trends? One of the things that we've been looking at is cancer incidence. What's really disturbing is in the last year and really over the last several years, we've seen this trend. We're seeing more and more patients under the age of 50 who are getting cancer, and that's relatively young. Most cancer affects individuals over the age of 50. In fact, most cancers affect people over the age of 60. But we're seeing this sort of disturbing increase in incidence of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer in patients that are under the age of 50. And that's really confusing, and we're not really sure what's going on. There are a couple of different things that we know. Certainly for breast cancer, for example, we know that we are getting better at earlier detection. As you can imagine, if patients are getting screened at an earlier age, you are going to find more cancer in a younger age than if you weren't screening at all. You don't find things that you're not looking for. Part of the increased incidence can be explained by just folks being more proactive in their screening, which is great, because what we know about breast cancer, for example, is if you can diagnose breast cancer at an early stage. Stage one, overall survival in 2025 is 99%. That's actually a really great statistic. That's part of it. But we also think there are other factors that are probably keying into causing earlier onset of cancer. There's a lot of studies that are ongoing looking at behavioral modifications, lifestyle, and environment. Some folks are wondering whether or not there are things like processed foods or microplastics that might have something to do with increased younger colorectal cancer. Then certainly we know. Some things we know for sure, unfortunately, do increase your risk of colorectal cancer, and that includes red meat, processed meats, alcohol, these things we know we have to reduce our consumption of alcohol. Everything in moderation.
- [23:47]
Host
I know when you went over that statistic, when we met and we were all drinking wine, I know I felt guilty. Yeah, well, I was drinking wine and then whiskey. But is there a healthier version or they're just all.
- [24:04]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I think it's about everything in moderation. Right. So it's about. I mean, I think one of the. Actually one of the studies that is being conducted, so we don't know yet what the outcomes are going to be is whether or not binge drinking actually might increase. Increase the incidence of colorectal cancer. So the idea here is it doesn't matter whether you're having one or two drinks several nights a week versus on one night having ten drinks or more. We certainly know that there are all sorts of bad side effects of binge drinking for other reasons. But does it also increase your risk of colorectal cancer? There's actually studies looking into that.
- [24:39]
Host
One random question I just thought of.
- [24:41]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Sure.
- [24:42]
Host
Because this just came to my mind. I had a colostomy for a while. Not cancer related. But is there a relationship between scar tissue and cancer or trauma to tissue?
- [24:55]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, this is an interesting question. So I would say what we do know is that cancer is typically caused when you see sort of damage to cells that occurs over time. So the best example of this is smoking and lung cancer, where we know that nicotine and tar that's in cigarettes is actively causing mutations in the cells in your lungs. Therefore, you end up with a very high likelihood of developing lung cancer. Similarly, UV radiation and skin cancer, we know that there's that direct link where the UV radiation from the sun damages the DNA in your skin cells and that increases your likelihood of having skin cancer. That we know is true. Whenever we see things that damage your cells and your. It increases the likelihood that you accumulate mutations that could one day result in cancer. The question then is about scarring and whether or not that is related. It's unclear. I'll give you a couple of things that we do know. Interestingly, for gastric cancer, recently it's been shown actually that some ulcers are actually related to having gastric cancer. And it's the ones that are related to a bacterial infection with a bacteria called H. Pylori. And that's relatively new for us to realize that one, the H. Pylori causes ulcers, and then that that is actually related to gastric cancer. So we know, for example, there, there's a bit of a link. Here's an interesting sort of flip side of this story, which is that in breast cancer, what we know is, and this is a correlation first, before we realized why there's actually this interesting correlation between how many children a woman has had and breastfed and then their likelihood of developing breast cancer. What we found is that women who have had zero children have a higher risk of breast cancer slightly than women who have had at least one child. But then at some point, I think if you have more than four, that risk goes up again. The question is, why is that? It turns out the reason is because when you undergo pregnancy and then subsequent breastfeeding, the entire mammary tissue of your breasts have to be completely reorganized. As you can imagine, you have to restructure the breast tissue in order to be able to create milk. That process of doing that actually helps you reset your breast tissue. That's why actually having at least one child actually lowers your risk of breast cancer compared to not having any children at all. It's interesting the different things that are related with cancer risk.
- [27:23]
Host
That's amazing. Even if your boobs fill up with milk, but you can't breastfeed because there's no latching or you don't believe in still could reduce your risk for cancer.
- [27:35]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Exactly. Because what's happening is biolog that that tissue gets reorganized in order to create milk. And whether or not you actually breastfeed or not, that's a biological process that happens regardless.
- [27:46]
Host
You are fabulous.
- [27:48]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I have a lot of random, random like tidbits of information. I'm glad that this is, this is fun.
- [27:55]
Host
You're like, okay, this is your life, obviously, right. I mean, you have to devote your life to be able to, to be so brilliant. And then you've succeeded and you're young and you are in charge of a massive company. You have so much influence. I mean, people who have cancer go to get it treated and your picture's on the wall. I'll have a friend send a picture of your picture on the wall.
- [28:22]
Dr. Alicia Jo
You know, it's really interesting. I think I never got into this to be on the picture on anybody's wall, actually. It's really interesting. Sort of my motivation for why I got into this field. Yeah, Honestly, I've always found biology super fascinating. And I think it was just from a pure curiosity standpoint. The moment I learned about biology, I just felt like, how does that. Everybody must love this topic because isn't this just us studying the reason why we all exist? Isn't this a study of life? And isn't that fascinating? And so I, I just have always enjoyed understanding sort of the why behind how do humans work? How do cells function? How are we related to other organisms in this, in this earth? And then I got turned on to cancer research actually when I was in high school. So I was just really interested in biology. I thought that the actual work was interesting. I wanted to hold a pipette, I wanted to, you know, look, peer into a petri dish. And so I was encouraged by my high school biology teacher to try to work in a research lab when I was in high school. When I was a junior in high school, I was at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which is a high school associated with the University of Chicago. I went over to the University of Chicago and I just cold outreached one of their investigators. And his name was Jeffrey Green. It turns out he was the director of their cancer center. But I didn't know who he was. And I asked if he was interested in if I could, as a high school student, work in his lab. And he took such a big leap of faith in sort of letting me do that, because I'm not sure that I would let like a 15, 16 year old person into my lab and touch all the equipment. But he was so kind and he sort of took me under his wing and he let me train in his lab. And I think it was that sort of leap of faith and that sort of paying it forward that really made it so that I had an exposure to this field so early in life. And I just completely fell in love with it and I've been working on it ever since.
- [30:32]
Host
So what, what training do you have? Like, I mean, you have 8 million letters after your names. Fit for the, for the layman, you know, how did you become who you are in your career?
- [30:46]
Dr. Alicia Jo
So I have a bachelor's in biology from MIT, and then I have a PhD in biological and biomedical sciences from Harvard, and then I have a postdoctoral work at UCSF afterwards. And in all of those three institutions, I was pursuing cancer research. Actually, as an undergrad at mit, I had the privilege of working in an amazing cancer research lab of a researcher called Bob Weinberg, who actually is credited as the grandfather of cancer research. And I didn't know that when I started working for him, but I had the privilege of working for four years in his lab as an undergraduate technician. And I learned so, so much about cancer research. And I really feel like that's where my career really took off. But yeah, that's my background.
- [31:33]
Host
It's absolutely incredible. It's incredible. Okay, I have to ask. What is the most disturbing moment in your life that you've experienced work or personal or part of you?
- [31:49]
Dr. Alicia Jo
This is a hard one to answer because I feel like, I guess I've lived with a pretty privileged and sheltered life in some way. But I would Say, you know, one thing that I found that was kind of a rude awakening for me, that. That was disturbing to realize was I went into academic science because I really was following the curiosity, and I just loved that journey of discovery. Then I realized that because of the way that academic science is funded and because of how competitive it is, it does create these incentives that I think sometimes creates disturbing behavior. I remember when I was training, I would see postdoctoral fellows. These are folks that are going to go on to start their own labs and sort of do their own independent research. I would see this behavior where their mentor, their advisor, who was their postdoc advisor, as soon as that that person became an independent investigator, they would immediately become competitors. And I thought that was really unfair because it's. You know, you spend all this time trying to claw your way to independence. You're doing your own studies, you're looking for your own funding, but ultimately then for your data that you generated with your own two hands, for that to be used against you, because now your advisor is using your own data to compete against you. That felt really icky. And so it kind of turned me on to understanding this funding problem in academic research and how do we incentivize collaboration rather than competition? But, yeah, that was a bit of a rude awakening.
- [33:29]
Host
It's cutthroat.
- [33:31]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Very cutthroat. I mean, more so than I would have ever anticipated. And, yeah, I guess that was sort of when my naive, romantic bubble about science got a little bit popped.
- [33:43]
Host
I had a similar experience when I had a. We were doing research on schizophrenia, and I had a supervisor. We were videotaping interviews in order to gain data to run about schizophrenia and behaviors. And the supervisor told me, I don't think you should be on this project anymore. And I asked why? And he said, because I don't think there's anything good about you.
- [34:06]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Whoa.
- [34:07]
Host
And I was like, I was young, right? And then he went on and he took all of my data from my interviews, you know, a qualitative analysis of behavioral structures, and published it.
- [34:21]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really. Unfortunately, the incentives for, you know, how you get promoted or how you get funding are all tied to your ability to publish and be able to be a certain, you know, author order being the first author or the last author. And. Yeah, it creates really bad behavior.
- [34:42]
Host
Yeah. I mean, that's why I married a psychologist. And so then we published together. So we're either first or second on everything.
- [34:47]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I think. No, but I think that's the thing we're all kind of learning. I mean, after I left academic research, I was in a company called Color health for almost 10 years. I was their chief science officer, and it was a startup company that was trying to help patients get access to genetic testing that would tell them about their likelihood of developing cancer. And it was all about making products. It was all about bringing a product to market. One of the things I quickly saw as soon as I started at Color was that it was so collaborative compared to what I had experienced in academic medicine. I realized that you can get things done just as effectively when you work together than if you're just in it for yourself. I do actually think I'm seeing academic medicine and academic science moving in that direction. I think the reason is actually because, one, I think that we as people are realizing the importance of collaboration. I think the Internet has a lot to do with that. I think you can now ask an expert anywhere in the world for a little bit of advice. And it's so much more accessible than it used to be. But I think the other thing is that the complexity of the problems that we're trying to solve have become massive. These days we're having to solve a biological problem in parallel with a huge computational problem because oftentimes we're looking at large data sets and it's actually really important to have different people on the team who have different expertise. So I'm actually feeling like academic science is becoming more collaborative, which I'm very excited to see.
- [36:17]
Host
And that's something I fight for so much. You know, we should be lifting each other up because the gain, the gain would be synergistic. It would be so much greater.
- [36:26]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yep, yep, exactly.
- [36:28]
Host
Yeah, that's. I mean, you coming on the podcast and talking is our collaboration. And this message is people are going to hear things and learn things that they had no idea about.
- [36:37]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Exactly.
- [36:38]
Host
And then you speak so eloquently and people want to listen to you as well.
- [36:43]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I hope so. I hope we haven't put anybody to sleep.
- [36:47]
Host
I don't think so, but they probably wouldn't tell us. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
- [36:56]
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- [37:56]
Jenny Garth
This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. Can't afford Ozempic? Try WeGovy from Future Health. Just $199 and FDA approved for weight loss. No insurance or tricky syringes needed, just results. Visit futurehealth.com that's future without the E and start losing weight this week. Future Health weight loss data based on independent studies sponsored by Future Health Future Health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at provider discretion.
- [38:27]
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- [39:57]
Host
Okay, so we're gonna do our lightning round of questions.
- [40:00]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Let's do it.
- [40:01]
Host
Okay. If you could commit a crime and get away with it, what would it be?
- [40:07]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, this is, I was thinking about this. So if I could get, get away with this crime, I think that the way that health care and payment for health care today is sort of done in the United States is a crime. I think that there are patients who have a lot of healthcare debt and aren't able to get access to the treatments that they need and are getting sort of hounded by collection agencies and they're making decisions about the quality of the care they're getting based off of how much money or how much they can afford. So if I could Zorro in the night, go and erase all the records of people who have healthcare debt and just like blank slate, all of that, I would do that.
- [40:53]
Host
Oh my gosh. I would be like Zorro's, I don't know, your sidekick. I mean, I've personally given Ellie 50 grand for her treatment because she is struggling so much. So I. Okay, we'll get our black masks on and go.
- [41:08]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, exactly, exactly. We'll get our Zora mask, big hat, black masks. Nobody will know what's coming.
- [41:14]
Host
It doesn't need to be Luigi Mangioni style. We can figure it out a different way.
- [41:18]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly.
- [41:21]
Host
Okay, next question. And I know this is the oddest question, but if you had to die by death penalty, how would you want to go? Firing squad? Injection, electrocution? Or maybe you personally have different fun ideas.
- [41:35]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I mean, so I'm going to take a really sort of scientific and nerdy approach. I would pick lethal injection and ideally administered under proper clinical protocols.
- [41:47]
Host
And I need a clinical trial of your death.
- [41:49]
Howie Mandel
Okay.
- [41:51]
Dr. Alicia Jo
What I'm optimizing here for is sort of the being able to go in peace. Right. And I think there's a little more sedation involved with lethal injection than the other two. So.
- [42:02]
Host
Yeah, yeah, I interviewed you.
- [42:04]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Hopefully I'll never have to. Hopefully I'll never have to make that choice.
- [42:08]
Host
I interviewed a CIA agent and of course he wanted to go by firing squad.
- [42:12]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I mean that, of course, it's in our trade, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [42:19]
Host
I would want to be manipulated and probably into my own suicide. I think because I'm a psychologist.
- [42:24]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, yeah, I could see that.
- [42:28]
Host
Okay, this is a big question for you. If you could change a law, what would it be?
- [42:35]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I mean, this is very much related to the previous, my previous answer, but I do have a really strong point of view on this. I think that the way that health care is paid for in the United States and the really opaque way in which payers, private insurance carriers are able to Obfuscate how much it costs in order to maximize profits is very detrimental to the patient and it creates very misaligned incentive structures. It's hard to say whether there's one wrong player. I think that everybody kind of conforms to this very weird incentive structure that exists. But I think it does start at the regulatory part of the policy part of the world. So if I could change a lot, it would very much be about how we cover basic essential health care for every single person that needs it. And that's not just on the treatment side. I actually think that's also on the prevention side because at the end of the day, if we can do a better job of preventing some of these very expensive diseases to treat like late stage cancer, we would save money as society. But we actually do need to make available some of these life saving technologies. And I just think that right now the public policy and the sort of private insurance reimbursement as well as Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement for all the new technology, it's just not keeping up. Like we're inventing technology at a much faster rate than the policy is keeping up. And we end up in this situation where if you have the means to pay for it yourself, maybe you get access to it, but not everybody else can. So this is the place where I would definitely focus.
- [44:15]
Host
I love that. Yeah. Like the, the gallery test or the. What is the tube that people are.
- [44:21]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Going in pre nou novo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [44:24]
Host
To just. The very wealthy people are able to access incredible preventative treatments right now. Yeah. Okay, final question.
- [44:35]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Okay.
- [44:36]
Host
Can you tell me a secret?
- [44:38]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah. This is going to be slightly embarrassing. So we've talked about how amazing my career has been as a scientist, but actually when I was like when I was in high school, I really dreamed of becoming a novelist. I really, really enjoyed reading science fiction and fantasy. And I would just. I was such a bookworm. I go to the library. So I really like, I like. I had like a, like a journal where you write down your dreams or whatever. And I wrote like I want to write. I want to publish a book one day. Not like a nonfiction book, like a novel. And of course I'm not a novelist, but in order to sort of scratch that itch, I do like for my own self. I don't publish, but I write fan fiction to like escape from reality. And I have this, my own little collection of like terribly written fan fiction just to like continue that, that that dream.
- [45:36]
Host
Like handwritten or. You typed this up?
- [45:38]
Dr. Alicia Jo
No, I typed it up. I actually. So I started in high school. I started writing my own fan fiction and I thought it was so great. I think I wrote my first one, I was like 13, and it was a Star wars fan fiction. And I like, I was so proud of it. I made cover art for it using Photoshop and I printed it out. It was like 100 pages, but it was like double spaced because I. Because like I. It wasn't good, but. But I just. I don't know, I've always, You know, maybe one day I will. I will try to write an actual story.
- [46:05]
Host
I think you should. You know, I have a master's. One random master's I have is in dream analysis. Freudian dream analysis. I could help you edit it.
- [46:13]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that would be so much fun. That would. If I could, you know, it would be such a different alternate reality if I were a novelist instead of a scientist. But yeah, I really enjoyed doing that.
- [46:28]
Host
I love that. I did not expect that. And I love that this is actually.
- [46:32]
Dr. Alicia Jo
A very, very little known fact. So I'm not sure why I just told everybody that.
- [46:38]
Host
It's okay. Seven million people.
- [46:42]
Dr. Alicia Jo
I'm going to get a lot of questions from people who know me really well because they did not know this about me.
- [46:48]
Host
Well, can you leave us with a tip? A tip for people who may not have cancer? Maybe a trick for prevention that we can take on?
- [46:58]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, I think it's about being proactive about your health. I think that sometimes we kind of think that we are a passenger on this journey that is life and whatever happens going to happen. Right. And then what tends to happen is that we get really scared of knowing what's around the corner. And so what happens is you'll see people putting off prevention. They just think like, oh, you know, I don't need to go to my doctor, or, you know, I can do that next month or I can do that next year. And then all of a sudden it just kind of falls off of your radar.
- [47:25]
Host
And speaking to all of the men out there.
- [47:27]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Exactly. And in fact, one of the things that studies have shown is that even though the incidence of cancer is higher in women, the mortality for cancer is higher in men. And one of the reasons this is true is because men tend to be diagnosed at a later stage. They tend to be less proactive about their screening. And what ends up happening is that they end up with later stage cancer diagnoses. They wait until something hurts. They wait until something's symptomatic. By the time something is symptomatic it means it's progressed enough that something is off in your system. The whole point of prevention is that you find things before they become symptomatic. It is really important to do that. It's the same reason why you take your car in for an oil change. It's so that you don't break down the middle of the freeway. We have to do that for our bodies too. And so this is the tip that I would give to everyone.
- [48:18]
Host
I think that's great. So to summarize, men, take your hand and fondle your balls right now.
- [48:27]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Or ask your doctor to do it.
- [48:30]
Host
That's a better tip. Women, grab your boobies. Okay.
- [48:34]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.
- [48:36]
Host
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and educate us because your brain is incredible and what you know so few people are even aware of at a shallow level. And you just offered us so much depth in a short period of time. It's amazing.
- [48:54]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Thank you. Yeah, it was so much fun and this is such a great conversation. So thanks for having me.
- [48:59]
Host
Thank you for listening to another episode episode of Intentionally Disturbing. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you actually learned things you didn't know. And I hope right now your hand is either on your testicles or your tits. See you next time.
- [49:17]
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- [50:17]
Jenny Garth
This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. Can't afford Ozempic? Try WeGovy from Future Health. Just $199 FDA approved for weight loss. No insurance or tricky syringes needed, just results. Visit futurehealth.com that's future without the E and start losing weight this week. Future Health weight loss data based on independent studies sponsored by Future Health. Future Health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at providers discretion.
- [50:47]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?
- [50:50]
Host
Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days?
- [50:53]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted?
- [50:55]
Host
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.
- [50:58]
Dr. Alicia Jo
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report it's summer time to enjoy long days, lazy nights and great food. Because Uber Eats has deals all summer long. So when hunger strikes, don't sweat it. Delicious deals are just a tap away on Uber Eats. Enjoy all your favorite grocery items delivered straight to you. Get ice cream, soda and snacks from your favorite stores like Wegmans and cvs, and make the most of every moment. Now that sounds like a good summer order. Now on UberEats Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
- [51:46]
Jenny Garth
This is an iHeart podcast.