I'm Terrified of Cancer. So I Called My Childhood Friend Kenan Onel, Cancer Geneticist.

I'm Terrified of Cancer. So I Called My Childhood Friend Kenan Onel, Cancer Geneticist.

From The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table by Comedy Cellar Network

July 23, 2026 · 1h 13m

About this episode

Noam reunites with his childhood friend Kenan Onel, a cancer geneticist, to discuss fears of cancer and the complexities of cancer testing and treatment.

0:00 The friend he hasn't seen since sixth grade 5:16 Angelina Jolie, BRCA, and the 20% nobody tells women about 18:23 What a cancer cell actually is - and why tumors evolve 26:31 How cancer actually kills you, and what a seizure is 32:14 The last cigarette: why he can't take the test every week 46:27 The best medicine in the world, and who can't get to it 1:03:23 Telling a family there's nothing left Noam hadn't seen Kenan Onel since high school in Ardsley, where Onel graduated first in the class and Noam, by his own account, drifted somewhere well below. Fifty years later Onel runs genetics and genomics at Roswell Park - the only comprehensive cancer center in all of western New York - and Noam has one thing he wants to ask him about. He's afraid of cancer. His grandfather died of it. His father died of it. He's taken the Grail blood test, it came back clean, and he wants to know why he can't just take it every week. What follows is part reunion and part interrogation. Onel explains what a cancer cell actually is, why tumors evolve like finches in the Galapagos, and what is physically happening to someone during a seizure. He explains how cancer kills - the mechanism, organ by…

People in this episode

Host: Noam

Guest: Kenan Onel

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Roswell Park, Grail, UK

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