at one sitting? that really for me -- how much do we need? think about it, how much food do you need to sustain you for the next three hours? you're shaking your head, you need about 100 calories per hour to sustain yourself. on average. i now eat half of what i used to eat because -- i didn't even know this. she said you ate 12 ounces of protein. i didn't even know what 12 ounces of protein look like. i knew something about a palm being freed. [laughter] involves exchanging how you perceive, what you want. and, juneau, an earlier question talked about loneliness. if you want to eat because it is going to make you feel better

you eat because you feel better and if you think that is what you want if you look at each plate and say that is my friend it's going to make me feel better there's nothing on can do. you've got to change where you look at the plate and say that's not my friend, that's not going to make me feel better that you have to want something else and when you want something else it's easier to quote on the stimulus. that's the way our brains work. thank you. thanks for being here. [applause] david kessler has been the dean of the medical schools of yale and university and the university of california san francisco. he served as commissioner of u.s. food and drug administration under presidents george h. w. bush and bill clinton from 1990 to 1997. dr. kessler is a graduate of amherst college, harvard medical school and university of chicago law school. rodale is the publisher. to find out more, visit rodale.com.

.. >> host: we are here with one of the authors i am have admired my whole life, eduardo

galeano. eduardo galeano board in the uruguay i mentioned to him i have had his books in my head for decades. one of the reasons i became involved in latin america and studies about latin america was because of your work spur it is really a great pleasure for me to be here with you. >> thank you. >> host: you have been in the states for a while? how long? >> guest: it 10 minutes. i just arrived. >> host: i know you are going to york. >> guest: and then other cities. >> my new baby. >> this is the book, at "mirrors" stories of almost everyone but of course, i checked out the spanish title

title, [speaking spanish] which is a little different which means universal history, almost. >> guest: almost because if you say universal history it sounds so hollow and arrogant. my intention was to write an homage to the human adversity. without boundaries or frontiers more from time or from the map, to be free. it was ended venture -- and adventure. >> host: i think it is less serious when it is called

stories of almost everyone" because almost everyone is in this book. and predicted the people who are not usually mentioned in world history, i give us a couple of examples of the kinds of stories that you are telling at that you think characterize what kind of a book this is? >> yes. my intention was i never know what the result is that the level of good intentions, the good intention was to rescue the beauty of the terrestrial rainbow. we are much more than what we are told we are. official history has mutilated our past. the media it is mutilating

present history. we are much more than what we are told. for instance, most people who were doing history making history know they are doing it, women they know their place, black people, it indians, akamai india, i don't know, but so many colors to be added to a flower rainbow which is much more beautiful than the one in the sky. >> host: i don't know if people will realize what kind of a book to this is because this is not a history

book, not a novel or a work of non-fiction, a serious analysis, it is a book of stories broke and i think this is how long they are. sometimes they are half a page, most of the time they are between one and one 1/2 pages. just for fun would you read it the first tory just to give us an idea? >> guest: born of desire life alone no memory, it had hands but no one to touch. it had a town but no one to talk to. by four was -- it was when

life was known but then he spoke the arrow split the lives down the middle and a life was to. when they caught sight of each other they've lost and when they touched each other, they lost again. >> host: that is a great example. of course, it made me think of genesis. >> guest: yes. our part to a real-life is part of daily life. >> host: it is one of the most affectionate pieces in the hundreds of pieces i think you said there are 600?

>> guest: very, very short stories. who finally survived after a process of for announcing and sacrificing. there are some other short stories in the first version but it was composed so the book would have a continued rhythm and some of the stories were so sad. it touched my back. why? why? am i not beautiful enough? am i stupid? i am not stupid. i want to be there. yes of course, i know that but

i am sorry. i cannot be there. this is a problem with the motorcycles which i love to ride. so many little and short pieces but i am in love with each one of them. but he creates a whole world or some business i am sorry. >> host: you wrote another book called memory of fire. >> guest: of three books. >> host: it is a trilogy. i read that in the '80s and you do similar things it is more historical epic but the narrative structure is similar, you start off with the genesis is it is all about

latin america at the wind quote it is about america including north america, it is the america is because we are americans in the south. >> host: of some of the. >> guest: the languages suppress but we are american and also. i am using the collective memory of the americas in the three volumes. this is much more ambitious. because it is the entire world 87 the entire world and the entire history. i have been a fan but i think people associate you with the great latin american writers and i know that to be in the

same sentence as others is daunting but others that are household words in the united states but in latin america you are certainly as well known as the they are. and what is interesting is that all three if you are journalist. and you have this immediacy even though we start off with the piece and we will read many more, at the beginning of everything when man meets woman, you talk about all of the wars, all of the cultures, the development of humankind and a the scope is amazing and daunting. i thought we would do and the autobiography before we go on with the book.

of course, your name has been in the headlines in the united states because the president of venezuela, chavez met our president barack obama and as a gesture of friendship, he gave barack obama, this book, "the open veins of latin america" i understand he gave it to him in spanish which was difficult because obama does not read spanish but i think the intention was to give him a book that if he were to read it it would open his eyes about latin america what was your reaction when you heard that anecdote that chavez had taken your book two barack obama? >> to be on rather than the

old of course, i was happy about but i am a walker. i was walking on the seashore. they said it is selling so well. this was terrible for me. each one of us is becoming defensive you sell, you are not selling you are sold or you are bought a. >> host: the bbc i think did that to you the cuts after he gave your book two barack obama it rose to #2 in the amazon ranking spry checked it because originally it was 57,000.

negative and a one or 200,000 but it bounced up and down bride notice this week is 17,000. so you could be a little more humble. [laughter] it is not important at all in some fields of life there is what quantity and quality may be closer related but not in literature. you could be very successful in the market and in the quality but it definitely depends on that. in all of the history of the spanish language it is terrible, he wrote something like books like a soap operas and she sold much more.

really. it does not mean too much. >> host: i think it is significant because this book affected me so much when i was a young man and it turns out that i thought you were such a man of such stature and so great then me but it turns out we're almost the same age to run the book in the beginning i tried to win the prize but i lost but perhaps it was not serious enough because at that time it was 1970, the left wing used to believe that if you were not boring then you're serious and this is a boring buck.

anyway in mexico the first year it was a disaster. nobody bought the book. it was a complete disaster. but later the military dictatorships became my marketing agent. we cut as they burned the book. so then the publicity thanks to these generous people. so after five or six months, then in the book could enter freely into the military prison because they thought it was a textbook on anatomy.

and the books of medicine runoff forbidden. but after a short period they realized that was not exactly it. >> host: apropos of it being burned i want to tell the nine anecdote that i read the book soon after it came out. i had the book with me when i was sent to lay in 1973 when the military to overthrow the government and i stayed on with me to write about the pinochet dictator shipwreck of the book, your book i think it is a distinction would have been among the books that i had to burn in order to be able to stay in chile yibin after all the books of the government the democratic

president and that was overthrown in after 17 years of dictatorship by the pinochet regime and that was an amazing experience that for an american north american like me, that's the books would be burned and in order to stay in a country you had to purge your library. i think that is a distinction that the books that were so good that they were threatening to pinochet were the ones that had to be kept here in the memory and not on my bookshelves and yours was among them. >> guest: it is not an innocent book. it is clearly guilty. yes. >> host: yes. >> guest: from that point* of view from any one of them.

>> host: you have been accused of being a pamphleteer because that and there's a lot of criticism as a result. and i was offended by because i know the book very well and your work very well and i know it is compelling literature. yes. you definitely make your point* of view very clear but i wanted a quote from a mexican and writer who weighed in on this and said you can say many things about this work of the latin american left but it is manichean, extremist, it distorts or eight centuries but nobody who reads it comes out unaffected the spanish word, i think it is absolutely true when you start reading this book for this book, you

are carried forward, you are outraged and you learn so much. but let's do a bio w. are born in uruguay and what happened at the time the military took over? you're the editor as a young man i read that when i was first involved it was a left-wing weekly publication very famous at the time. >> guest: perhaps the best. yes i was in jail for a brief period then i went to argentina where i founded and began a cultural magazine. which was a very successful experience.

we were selling we are talk about selling and not selling is important but it is your survival. it was a good experience because in the culture i was consecrated entirely to the cultural subjects. so maybe 1,000 copies in the best case. and we sold 35,000. which was the proof and the evidence that we were in touch with people nor not the usual clients for these sort of thing is. we were reaching people aside from the usual space where you find them or is in bookstores. this was because that coulter

was not only the production but all of the expressions collective expressions of identity. and all of the ways people find to communicate. so for us it was a command and that is why that is the importance it was also given to the city's, the letters from the prisons, to the dreams of drivers in the buses working 15 or 20 hours in a

day. so we were there what did you dream last night? in this exceptional moment, we went to the factories, we went to the workers who never saw the sun because they're working time was 8:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m.. the sun was a visible except on sundays. >> host: what years were you and argentina? >> guest: three years and ba'ath but then i was obliged. >> host: you were there in the years prior to the koop? >> guest: yes. yes. of course, and a few months

after that two but i was obliged to leave -- to leave argentina because i did not like to be there. i was obliged to go out. you cannot distinguish the difference between courage and madness. i was levying in such a way i was going to be killed. >> host: i like to bring in some background about that because one of my books is called the condor years about operation condor. and it describes in great detail the period you were living in argentina and the amazing thing there is absolutely no exaggeration and

your feeling it was madness to stay on in argentina at least 22,000 people were killed at the period by the military, particularly after the military coup happened. operation condor was an operation to kill people from other countries who sought exile, people like you. i wanted to ask you then most of the year koreans who were killed in this period by the military regime were killed in argentina. more died in argentina. >> guest: most of them. >> get was like to say in your book, common market of death latin american has not been

able to create a real market in the economy but it was quite successful anti-depression. >> host: so you do those who were prominent exiles who were both murdered in this period 1976. >> guest: i was on both lists from uruguay and argentina so staying there was a suicide. >> host: it was lucky for all of us that you got out. >> guest: for me it was. >> host: because you continue to write. >> guest: i went to spain, london, there i wrote almost 12 for 13 years. >> host: which other books are translated in english? >> guest: a lot of them that they were written during this period of exile and it gave me

time to write. it was a very, very difficult experience, all american history, they are through the short stories. through the flesh and bone that you could touch. >> host: in "mirrors" you create a tapestry of story, there is a flow of wind up back sometimes you cover 1,000 years and one paydown sometimes you go back and forth citywide but there is a continuity

but the lot of the land. i think underlay and like the subway. >> host: the underground river. >> guest: yes. like an underground river. some music and you 19 all of these different pieces that may turn into a mess that is absolutely crazy but i hope not because we have this river. >> host: and one almost inevitably leads to another. i found reading "mirrors" sometimes i would stop in a -- star in the middle and pick it up and me carried forward and than because i had to prepare for this coming i read it all the way through but there is always but it is a push rr