please welcome siddhartha mukherjee. (cheers and applause) doctor, thank you so much for joining me. >> my pleasure. >> stephen: as i said your book is a pulitzer prize-winning, the em error of all maladies, a biography of cancer. i know is about cancer but let's keep it light, okay. when i said over there about cancer getting hit by a bus, why that makes sense to me is that cancer feels like an alien living thing in a body. it's doing what it wants. is it like another living thing in you? >> in some ways it is, but what's really, really tricky. and this was a realization that sent a real chill up the spines of all the biologists and scientists, what is really tricky is that the very genes that cause your normal sells to grow f you corrupt those genes that is what causes cancer to grow. the very genes that cause your embryo to grow, if you corrupt those genes, if those genes stop working properly that is what make cancer cells grows, it is not completely outside your body, it comes from the genetic material that is part

and my guest siddhartha mukherjee is a pulitzer prize winning cancer researcher. i'm going to ask him about this mole on my back. a recent study claims women think about sex ten times a day. but i don't buy it. my show is only on four times a day. (laughter) this is "the colbert report." captioning sponsored by comedy central stephen, stephen, stephen. >> thank you, welcome to the report, great to you have with us, folks. i'll be with you in a moment. thank you so much. i'll be with you in just a minute. i'm just finishing some on-line holiday shopping, the nice deal on a kindl fire. that will make a great coaster for my ipad. there, and done. with christmas. okay. of course, folks, today is cybermonday, when everybody mobs the on-line stores for the big holiday sales. to beat the rush last night i camped out in front of my computer, waiting for the internet to open. cybermonday is a followup to black friday, the day after

nobody else you know on somebody's mind i get that opportunity i got the right to keep and keep mukherjee. they never said that martin luther king is going to be a complete closure but the capacity is going to change from one hundred forty some beds to action forty two beds in france are built around pretty quickly so we're going to keep on from nothing not one of those. that has been erased from the hospital to challenge you built only for that in a challenge because you're going to be overwhelmed at times the professional turning gauge and getting everyone here to judge and even one parent leaves you to do want to push. around and it wash and dry. the community had to make me from ok everybody knows it's called killer k. we would get on cd and first thing people would ask is where might it be transported and if we said mark was u.k. you often response was please don't take the case. they're understaffed under-funded and we have too many patients and then have private physicians and with four or five hundred patients in an emergency room it's very difficult to treat hospitals and to the

help nobody else you know on somebody's mind i get that opportunity i got to right to keep and keep mukherjee. i never said that carbon fourteen is going to be a complete closure but the capacity is going to change from one hundred forty some beds to actually forty thousand beds so france would be a while pretty quickly so we're going to keep on two of the outlines of those. mysterious one hospitals the challenge you build don't be fooled into challenging them because they're going to be overwhelmed at times the professional tuning gauge don't need everyone here judging to need them that are easy to do work. around here questions i. the community had to make money from ok everybody knows it's called killer k. we would get on scene in first thing people would ask is where am i going to be transported and if we said mark was u.k. you know often the response was please don't take medicaid. they're understaffed under-funded and they have too many patients and didn't have private physicians and with four or five hundred patients in an emergency room it's very difficult to treat us those into the h