Curie×Feynman

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Marie Curie and Richard Feynman, on Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how.
2. 00:11
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   So this note just came in and I gotta say, Marie, my first reaction is—wait, really? Vaccines doing something for dementia? That's not what I would've guessed they were for.
3. 00:21
   Marie Curieshare moment

   You would not have guessed because you think in categories too much. A vaccine is not 'for' one thing. It is a method of training. What it trains may have consequences we did not predict.
4. 00:32
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Okay, but training what? I mean, we give you a dead virus or a piece of one, your body makes antibodies, you're protected against that virus. That's the deal, right?
5. 00:42
   Marie Curieshare moment

   That is the simple story. The story we tell children. But immunity is not simple.
6. 00:49
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Alright, so walk me through it. What's this 'startling hypothesis' they're talking about? Because I love a good hypothesis, especially when people call it startling.
7. 00:58
   Marie Curieshare moment

   They are saying the vaccines train something called innate immunity. This is the older part, the part that does not remember specific diseases. At least, we thought it did not remember.
8. 01:10
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Hold on, hold on. Innate immunity—that's the stuff that just attacks anything that looks wrong, right? No memory, no learning, just 'you look like trouble, I'm eating you.'
9. 01:20
   Marie Curieshare moment

   Yes. Macrophages, natural killers, the first responders. They respond to patterns. We believed they could not be trained, that they had no memory. This belief may be incorrect.
10. 01:31
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Oh boy. So you're telling me that the dumb part of the immune system might not be so dumb?
11. 01:37
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I would not call it dumb. It is ancient. It has been protecting life for hundreds of millions of years. Perhaps ancient does not mean incapable of learning.
12. 01:47
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, I'm with you. But how does this connect to dementia? That's the part that's got me scratching my head.
13. 01:54
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Dementia involves inflammation in the brain. Proteins that fold incorrectly, debris that accumulates. If the innate immune system in the brain becomes more efficient at clearing—at recognizing what does not belong—then perhaps it prevents the accumulation.
14. 02:10
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So you're saying a vaccine against, I don't know, tetanus or flu, somehow makes your brain's janitors better at their job?
15. 02:16
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That is the hypothesis, yes. The training is not specific to the brain, but the brain benefits. The microglia—these are the brain's immune cells—they may become better at maintenance.
16. 02:28
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's wild! Because we're not even aiming at the brain. We're just trying to keep you from getting the flu, and as a side effect, your brain stays cleaner. It's like tuning up your car and finding out your radio works better.
17. 02:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Your metaphors are always about machines. Bodies are not machines.
18. 02:44
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Fair enough, fair enough. But you gotta admit, there's something beautiful about unintended consequences that are actually good. Most of the time unintended consequences are a mess.
19. 02:55
    Marie Curieshare moment

    They are only unintended because we did not look carefully enough. If we had understood the full scope of what vaccines do, this would not surprise us.
20. 03:04
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, but Marie, come on. Nobody knew this stuff when you were working. Nobody even knew what DNA was when you were isolating radium.
21. 03:11
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That is correct. But we knew that biological systems are interconnected. We knew that one intervention could have many effects. I would not have been startled by this. Cautious, yes. Curious, yes. But not startled.
22. 03:26
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So what's the mechanism? I mean, if this thing is real, how does the training actually work? You stick a vaccine in someone's arm, the innate immune system sees it and says, 'Okay, I'm gonna remember this even though I'm not supposed to remember things'?
23. 03:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    They call it 'trained immunity' or sometimes 'innate immune memory.' The cells undergo epigenetic changes. The DNA itself does not change, but which genes are accessible, which are ready to activate—this changes.
24. 03:54
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Epigenetic! Oh, I like that. So it's like you're not rewriting the instruction manual, you're just putting sticky tabs on certain pages so you can find them faster next time.
25. 04:04
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. That is not a bad way to think of it.
26. 04:06
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And this sticks around? I mean, how long does this training last?
27. 04:10
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That is the question. We do not know completely. Some studies suggest months, others longer. The effect may fade. It may not. This is why the hypothesis is still being tested.
28. 04:21
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So if this holds up, what do we do with it? Do we start vaccinating people specifically to prevent dementia? Do we look for which vaccines work best for this?
29. 04:31
    Marie Curieshare moment

    We must be careful. We do not yet know if the effect is real, or how large it is, or which vaccines, or which populations. You are already thinking about application. First, we must understand.
30. 04:43
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah, but understanding is so we can do something with it, right? I mean, if this pans out and we can cut dementia risk just by keeping up with regular vaccines, that's huge. That's millions of people.
31. 04:55
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It would be significant, yes. But we must also consider—what if the effect depends on timing? On age? On genetics? What if in some people it has no effect, or the opposite effect? Science that moves too quickly to application makes errors.
32. 05:10
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, I hear you. But I gotta say, this is the kind of thing that makes me love science. You think you understand something, then boom—a whole new layer shows up. The immune system has a memory we didn't know about. That's just beautiful.
33. 05:24
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It is not new. It was always there. We simply did not see it. This is not the immune system changing. It is our understanding changing.
34. 05:33
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Right, right. Nature doesn't read our textbooks. We're always catching up.
35. 05:38
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. And this is why careful observation matters more than clever theory. The observation came first. Now we build theory to explain it.
36. 05:47
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So if you were still in the lab today, would you be working on this?
37. 05:50
    Marie Curieshare moment

    If I were in the lab today, I would be measuring. I would want to know exactly which cell types are affected, exactly which molecular changes occur, exactly how long they persist. I would not speculate until I had data.
38. 06:03
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And I'd be trying to figure out the mechanism! Why does this happen? What's the evolutionary reason that innate immunity can learn? There's gotta be a reason it works this way.
39. 06:13
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps there is. Or perhaps it is a side effect of other pressures. Not everything has a purpose. Some things simply are.
40. 06:21
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Maybe. But I'm gonna bet there's a reason. Evolution doesn't usually keep expensive tricks around unless they're useful.
41. 06:28
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then you should test that bet. Design an experiment. That is what bets are for in science.
42. 06:33
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Deal. And in the meantime, people should probably keep getting their vaccines, huh?
43. 06:38
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That was already true before this note arrived.