When a Physicist Declares War on Cancer's Biggest Weakness

Episode 1 - What happens when someone who studies the fundamental laws of the universe gets personally invested in outsmarting cancer? You get Dr. Peter Kuhn—and a completely different approach to the

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I've been thinking about surprise lately. Not the good kind—birthday parties and unexpected gifts—but the devastating kind that knocks the wind out of you when a doctor says those four words: "I'm sorry. It's cancer."

For my guest this week on Kicking Cancer's Ass, that moment of devastating surprise became a decades-long mission to eliminate uncertainty from cancer's playbook entirely.

The Physicist Who Hates Surprises

Dr. Peter Kuhn isn't your typical cancer researcher. He's a University Professor at USC working across biological sciences, medicine, biomedical engineering, aerospace and mechanical engineering, and urology. But here's what makes him extraordinary: he's a physicist who got mad at cancer—and decided to do something about it.

"What I hate about cancer is surprise," Peter told me during our conversation. "Cancer in and of itself might be unavoidable—it's part of aging, part of the process. But what is avoidable is surprise, unknown, uncertainty. All of that is what we need to eliminate through the process of science."

His journey began the same way mine did—watching a mother face breast cancer as a teenager. But while I eventually stepped into the patient role myself, Peter channeled his experience into revolutionary research that's changing how we think about detecting cancer before it becomes a crisis.

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