Two RadioLab Podcasts About Tumors & Brain Disease

At this moment my sister is dying from a brain tumor. While we wait for her end to come much thought is going on about her condition. Here are two favorite RadioLab podcasts about tumors and brain disease. If you have not yet heard them I recommend that you take the time to do.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-famous-tumors/

The original program including a tumor update.

HeLa S3 cells (opiado/flickr/CC-BY-2.0)

When we first released Famous Tumors, Rebecca Skloot's book about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks (and her famous cells) had just hit the shelves. Since then, some interesting things have happened to both Henrietta's cells and her family. So, 4 years later, we have a newly updated show!

This hour, we poke and prod at the good, bad, and ugly sides of tumors -- from the growth that killed Ulysses S. Grant, to mushy lumps leaping from the faces of infected Tasmanian Devils, to a mass that awakened a new (though pretty strange) kind of euphoria for one man. Plus, the updated story of one woman's medically miraculous cancer cells, and how they changed modern science and, eventually, her family's understanding of itself.

Unraveling Bolero

http://www.radiolab.org/story/217340-unraveling-bolero/

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  Anne Adam's "Unraveling Bolero"

In this podcast, a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one famously repetitive piece of music.

Anne Adams was a brilliant biologist. But when her son Alex was in a bad car accident, she decided to stay home to help him recover. And then, rather suddenly, she decided to quit science altogether and become a full-time artist. After that, her husband Robert Adams tells us, she just painted and painted and painted. First houses and buildings, then a series of paintings involving strawberries, and then ... "Bolero."

At some point, Anne became obsessed with Maurice Ravel's famous composition and decided to put an elaborate visual rendition of the song to canvas. She called it "Unraveling Bolero." But at the time, she had no idea that both she and Ravel would themselves unravel shortly after their experiences with this odd piece of music.Arbie Orenstein tells Jad what happened to Ravel after he wrote "Bolero," and neurologistBruce Miller and Jonah Lehrer helps us understand how, for both Anne and Ravel, "Bolero" might have been the first symptom of a deadly disease.