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>> it now my pleasure to introduce sam apple. >> prior to his arrival at johns hopkins, sam taught creative writing and journalism at the university of pennsylvania for ten years. in ma in english and creative writing from the university of michigan and msa creative nonfiction from columbiaon university. personal essays,s, satires, journalistic features on a wide rangee of topics. recent years has primarily written about size in the new york times magazine, the new yorkers, the authentic wired, the los angeles times, financial times magazine technology we review among other publications.

he is the author of the book ravenous which we see the title on your screen and you are able to order. >> thank you for inviting me, wonderful to have you. i loved your book. i sat on social media, it reads like a novel. i was glued to it, it's all true. coming up with the ideas and connecting all of these dots. it's about a biochemist who was a homosexual living with his male partner in germany get hitler projected him.

there are many parts to dissect but i would like to start with automobiles, his family dynamic, his early life. tell us about hised family. >> mill worker, a prominent physicist. jewish, part of the famous worker family and a financial family, cousins of these other workers and at the time it was unusual for somebody, of jewish descent in these positions. his father rises all the way to the top if he grows up in this

house full of the world's greatest physicist, regular einstein, close with a meal worker fisher, one of the great chemists so many of these world-famous personalities would go on if they haven't already had nobel prizes. the intent to be a world changing scientists he grows up with, it's natural surroundings, what he feels is expected of him and the question in e his mind s not is he going to make a world changing discovery but what it's going to be. he feels a sense of competitiveness with his father that want to do him and it's easy to. he helped show this, he provided

the spreader evidence. he decides to make his name is a great scientist, he's going to do it in the realm of physics but biology in the living world but throughout his life he continues to h approach through the lens of a physicist, always interested in energy and let us the background. somebody described it almost like a prophet with a religious side, that's how he felt about sites. he pitted anybody who didn't become a scientist, he couldn't imagine it so that us the world he grew up in. >> little pressure, who he was

since he was a little kid, ingrained in him to be a scientist like you said. in his lab and has other things, i want too talk about hitler because the main part of the book. these two very different people tied together so in order to understand that relationship, you need to understand hitler's childhood.ot i didn't know the kind of child he was so now let's talk about hitler's and tie into it. >> i didn't plan to write about hitler's life the more research i did, the more clear it became from the time they were little, they were on a collision course sure enough in the 1940s we'll

talk about. but the reason in large part that cancer had been a rare disease in the early 19th century they are born in 1880s. by then cancer is becoming more and more common in the next decade becomes preoccupation of the people. disgruntled teenager and wants to be an artist but it's kind of and nobody really likes them and the only connection he has in the world his mother. the only human being less capable of loving.

right at the r time went hitlers failing to become an a artist, s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and he is shaken. never seen anybody look so depressed. what an extra night thank from a jewish doctor and including austria and back and a jewish doctor and caring for hitler's mother it is very grateful and have a good relationship with his doctor and they try everything but his mother is dying of breast cancer and nothing can be done and their devastating in the doctor has never seen that or seen from lisa depressed.

his mother dies of breast cancer and cancer remains to the very end of his life of central focus, extreme hypochondriac afraid of many diseases but none more than cancer. stories one after another. he's sure he's going to die of cancer with horrible stomach cramps and all sorts of conditions and part of the chilling aspect, he set up multiple different times with all these horrible things he wants to do is got to take care of business and the stories are really bizarre. he even had an obsession with shellfish, which some are speculative, award for cancer

some thought even that was. >> evidently his mother died a long and painful horrific death he witnessed and it wasn't, was about to launch a big battle and he stopped to do this, wasn't it during wartime? >> i think it was a different. but i could talk about that as well from there was a remarkable. in the 1940s which i could talk about that now, or that comes a little later in the progression. >> well, what do you think? is it more family where you are

going to go with this? >> , that comes up a little later. >> okay. so now we understand a little more where, what is driving these two people, what is their focus and passion? in this particular case, it's uappropriate. let's talk about his lab. tell us about his lab and not only this amazing lab he designed, that was really interesting, to but then how he behaved in that lab.in walk us through the lab. >> by the 1920s, whoever has a reputation as a brilliant biochemist and in 1931, the

rockefeller foundation says we are going to build you the life of your dreams. he wants to look like a country manor and an extraordinary thing after not too long after world war i, you have an american foundation building and institute for german and he assembles -- he doesn't really want academics working for him, he prefers technicians were brilliantly skilled but don't have their own academic interest. they have a team of expert technicians who do what hee says he'd been in world war i and he runs it basically like a military operation, they have these meetings and no one says anything and they go back to the lab and it's incredible because

they are relatively small operations but they are changing biochemistry one the normal discovery after another and it continues into the 1930s after the nazis come to power. >> surrounded in this lab, a man who likes the finer things in life. the penetrant the horses but let's digress because you brought up world war i. to me, that's part of his life, it almost didn'tt fit, i was surprised in world war i. tell us about matt a little bit. >> he was a german patriot and like many german patriots, he believed 1914 for germany and he is a jewish descent, not really

out, was a homosexual which is about as out as he could be, particularly if you look at them, 1914 they were committed to the land and signed up by the tens of thousands and they left versus it was an aristocratic and he was drawn to it in a lot of ways. i don't think he was a particularly rate soldiers there, there were some stories about him and he got an iron cross.

>> he was on the hawaiians right? >> yes on the eastern front, one of the remarkable parts of the story, by 17 or 1918, they weren't paying attention, by 1918, a disaster the depths depths are mounting and they are trying to get out of the german army sending letters talking to the ministry and saying we need him to come home and research german food production and albert einstein and all people write him a letter it says you are too important for signs, we need you to come home his parents wrote the letter but he does come home after einstein asked him to. it's interesting, einstein says you are too important for science and he was arrogant.

einstein understood how to commence him so sure enough, he comes home and it's possible he doesn't come home, he dies in the war. to think that einstein in theory could have played an important role in the story. >> okay, back to that now that we did world war i which was verywe interesting, residency urchins, what was it? it was a sea creature. >> the urgent. >> explain his work. he did his labs, what was his goal? what was he searching for? almost single mindedly. >> this research started even

before he had his own bob when he was in training as a medical student and a physiologist, he goes with all of these european scientists to a special marine station and he studied see urgent eggs and using fear as an experiment till 12 and trying to understand chromosomes in the foundationf going back to that. they were with these famous scientists the same time i mentioned before, he was always focused on energy. he wants to understand to grow, you need energy. he comes up with these innovative devices to measure

how much oxygen is being used and how much carbon dioxide is given off and he finds the see urgent eggs are taking up a lot of oxygen as they grow. if you are growing and need energy, that's always in his mind, trying to understand how it manages to grow, from the beginning he wants us to understand cancer and to understand cancer, you have to understand self growth. the interesting thing is when he starts to really turn his soul attention to cancer in 1923, he has see urgent experiments in the back of his mind, see o urgt eggs using more oxygen and it's growing, cancer cells will do the same thing and it's surprising seminal discovery in 1923 so it is not picking up more oxygen, it's strange and

surprising. it taking a lot of glucose but instead of burning off oxygen as you expect, it's breaking it down and turning into lactic acid spinning out of the cell the same fermentation process and cheese and yogurt and strange that cancer cells were doing this. for many years, is trying to understand why and what sets it off and it continues to this day. >> yes, and we could take some time to talk about that as far as what he discovered. there was a couple of aha moment, that was one of them. in his scientific community when he starts talking about this, what was the reaction from his

fellow scientists he talked about what he is a working on nw is discovery? >> in the early years it was such a new discovery that cancers behave, it took a while to set and but in time people did start to accept that this is true, the experiments in every cancer they tested seems to be true, they were originally looking at cancers and laboratory human cancer so people accept that this is experiment of the valid. it's a very unusual way, they take up a lot of this, just like micro organisms. what not accepted or remains controversial is why they are doing it.

it's not using oxygen, something must be broke. he brought this to the cancel so or anything, oxygen are what cells are supposed to do, that's the proper way and must be somehow broken in some way.ir is there a problem with respiration breathing with oxidant or cancer cells doing this for another reason? in time, the fact that cancer cells were doing t this is tribe accepted and it's an important discovery. is it possible to block it was some kind of therapy? can we start a cancer cell?

it's all extremely important science being discussed and will talk about that after the war, and of a strange part of the story we discovered. >> he is making a name for himself and he gives it attention by the rockefeller institute and gets it was a pension. a jewish man, we are in a war now, jewish people, a lot of his scientists leave. walk us through the beginning of the war and you've got to hand it to the man, he was sure nobody would touch him in his persona, he was harassed. tell us about that.

>> in a way, thus the extra night part, 1933 comes around and he won the nobel prize in 1931.n he's at the top of the scientific world in germany is the leading scientific nation and he's at the top of german science and has everything he could run his beautiful institute and a beautiful home a block away and then hitler comes to power and suddenly everything is in jeopardy and many of his colleagues leave right away and warburg thinks about it, he has the opportunity to leave in the 1933, 34 he decides to stay in many different reasons, part is that he believes the phenomenon

will be short-lived. he said it will be over in six months and so on. a lot of people believed this. he said i was here before hitler, nobody will take me out of here. he has harassed again and again in the early 30s, why aren't you sending our researchers to the marches and stuff? why aren't you usingng the hitlr salute? why do not have the flag up? he chases him out and screamed and gets away with it and he almost doesn't but they tolerated him ultimately because he was an important scientist in the early years he had all of us, the b early 30s to some extent they still cared about

his reputation so he had advantages when he was only half jewish, his father was jewish and his mother wasn't. so there was a lot going on but nobody should have been more vulnerable. not only jewish father but living with his male partner, he had the nazis could have got rid of him at any time. they put up with him what harassed him but i don't chase him out. meanwhile by the late 30s, they are gone and it's too late for him to leave. things are closing in on him and finally, they have the society

now and he's running, they're working for him and he's running it like a dictatorship and it's too much for many. a lot of people dislike him even before the lease because of his personality. a lot of enemies and they finally see him evicting them in 1941 and it looks like the beginning of the end for him. he is called to the headquarters, hitler is imposing this building and recall a man and it looks like he's knows what's going to happen. and it worked and later it was help map out the killing

machinery so one of the worst. we are going to let you live as long as a you focus on cancer. more externally, one is that you find out i discovered in hitler's planner he met on that same day to talk about it with secretary graff if that would be interesting in any event but the day turns out to be june 21, 1941. one of the most important days the entire project. only hours later the next morning, the have the operation, the british militaryy operation in history. it's hours later flowing into

soviet territory risking the entire project. on that day, just before it happened, there busy talking about the cancer science and sure enough, in his diary that night, he and hitler are staying up talking about how they will announce to the german people they invaded the soviet union. the middle of this, they stopped to talk about music science. ... there focused on otto warburg and cancer science. any explain it in this book. it is truly bizarre. patty: yes, i thought so too great was absolutely fascinating. almost hard to put somewhere in your head up in any way that is what happened.

and now, let's continue on. might be getting my timelines well, he left the lab and he moved the u.s. for a while and drove this foresight is absolutely crazy was a very kind soul that was just didn't know when that happened and why and then what happened after. >> after this event i told you he makes it to the end of the war not only if he survived in 1942 bombs started to fall sorry, 1943 started to fall and he is essentially moved to a new

institute which is sort of a refurbished mansion on a favorite stateus in the german countryside and this is at a time by the late 40s when nobody's allowed to use gasoline or building materials to build a new institute. he gets in trouble again and is almost arrested again but in the end, he survives and has an extraordinary treatment, so the soviets come to power and take over the other part and sort of caught in between the two worlds. they turn it into a military headquarters, so he has nowhere to go and no lab.

his entire existence he is trying to find something to do, a place to go and ends up managing in the late 40s to get appointments in the university of illinois with a photosynthesis researcher. it was hard for him to find a place because when he stayed in germany people thought he must be a nazi, he must have worked with them. it didn't look good that he had stayed the whole time. he gets his appointment for six months and comes to the university of illinois. he brings his partner, one of my favorite details in the book is

that he is put into a frat house to stay. nineteenth century but he gets involved in this huge debate about photosynthesis always competing with other scientists and in particular then he proceeded to drive everybody in the laboratory crazy not just with his disputes, but he says everybody is walking around in their winter coat.

everything i read about him it really pushed him to the brink so it's a book there are not many funny parts in the book but -- if you can put up with the antics. in the meanwhile, he's alienating more and more people and making more extreme statements not only is it important but it's the only thing that matters. he appears before a group of nobel laureates and says everything else is garbage. everything you need to know is they can't use oxygen so they

ferment. he literally uses the word garbage for everything else and insists that we could solve this disease. he's incredibly important what he's saying but the scientists are sort of already changing and in the 1950s we had the discovery in the dna and there's all these interesting discoveries about cancer taking place in the 60s and in the 1970s we had a breakthrough where the modern molecular biology isis born and they start to see the particular mutated genes can cause cancer and by this point it starts to fade away. he dies in 1970 and was

considered basic biochemistry. assure the metabolic enzymes are harder. they don't really matter. it's a sophisticated disease and it's not basic biochemistry. it's just amazing how quickly it happens. to some people haven't heard of wartburg and you have these famous papers coming out in the seminal textbooks that doesn't mention it at all and even the wonderful book the hallmark of cancer that talks about the sort ofix function that comes out in

2000 and it doesn't even mention the shift of permutation which is connected so it's amazing how it got lost in a lot of what i write about is how we discovered how it's so important. >> and that is what i would like to talk about now. for the members and for those that are listening to this, i would like to give people something to take home. the story in your book is what makes it so interesting but you tried to get through a lot of af information people can learn from us so, talk about how it's shifted and why we are talking about it.

and then it got lost and now, why again now. >> in the story it picks up again and in the late 1990s, the molecular biologist looking atgn mutated genes and how the signals go out from one protein to the next that caused itself to replicate so they are tracing these pathwaysne and find that they lead back to the metabolic enzymes to change their activity and it seems like why are these

peculiar to them. sureut it needs the energy but that's an afterthought. it comes in when it needs it. to be bringing them back to these fundamentals so rather than ignoring it and thinking of irrelevant, strange, why is metabolism being connected to all this and they start to look for the connections and how they take up nutrients. it really is remarkable over the next decade they start to see these networks are linked to metabolism and it seems the most fundamental role of many of the

networks is controlling metabolism, getting the nutrients into the cell and when they come into the cell, the proliferation process occurs and the direction people thought i will step back and say they thought it was, an afterthought where it seems like it is driving the process and it's kind of remarkable because if you think of it as divided and it doesn't have a way to take a nutrient and then integrate it into the process and collapse as one referred to as a t catastroe if you think about it froman a single cell organism ai said before it acts a lot like a single cell organism that comes into the nutrients and grows, it's a fundamental road signal

and that's what grows because it makes copies of it self and if it doesn't have a nutrient, if it doesn't go into that proliferation mode so scientists start to see that there is a fundamental link between metabolism and nutrient and growth proliferation. they start to rediscover that it shifts to this mode. when i saw the famous answer

scientists was the president of the memorial kettering shows mold growing over a piece of bread and says its occurrence or experiment, this is what cancer does. so that is the rediscovery. the cancer cells are getting morere glucose then they showed and proliferating. how does that happen and what does it have to do with it? for some, they are not interested. they are just interested in okay this is a drug that can somehow it's extremely important and there's some amazing that have come outut of this return. i was interested and naturally the cancer cells in many ways

affect that. what is really interesting to me is that it comes together in the late 1990s because at the same time they are rediscovering the cancer cells over the glucose and that's fundamentalr to cancer, so fundamental that if you do a pet scan it shows literally where in the body the cells are eating glucose and that is where the cancer is but at the same time, other scientists and epidemiologists are finding that obesity is linked to cancer, 13 different cancers and obesity and strongly i think it is the tip of the iceberg. this is the fundamental question can. you connect the two stories and is there something about the cancer connection as the sort of

most prominent and then you have the glucose multiplying. that in a way was the big product if there is a connection. i am not a scientist about what i can do is try to connect the dots between the different fields because they are talking to each other and focused on the same things and this is where i discussed a lot in the last chapter these are part of the story and the fundamental thing that connects them is this hormone,ul insulin. i don't know if i should pause here. >> this is where i wanted to be at this point. the question is if you think

about cancer, a microorganism it eats and makes copies of itself. if you get into the multicellular organisms it is more complicated because they don't just eat whenever they encounter food. it would be anarchy so again they said you can think about the multicellular organism. it'se kind of a remarkable thin. we have this a distribution system regulated by hormones and first and foremost it tells which cells to take up nutrients and how to store them. so to t understand cancer as ths

glucose we have a question of what makes ourselves take up glucose and first and foremost it's this hormone insulin. so you have to ask your self is there too much insulin and could that be a part of the story driving this affect of the metabolism and sure enough, there's a a remarkable body of evidence that suggests it is playing a huge role and it's a growth hormone that tells cells to eat and divide and grow. for decades people with elevated insulin have higher levels of cancer so this has been done for a long time.

obesity is the cancer but insulinli also activates all of these networks that i talked about before that are changing the way these are ones scientists use the word downstream insulin activates them in the same way that a mutation would. it causes them to keep taking the nutrients. it's a natural hormone. we all need it. we have insulin resistance, this condition where it's elevated all the time then you will have 24 hours a day far more signaling than you ever wanted and it could be activating these cancer pathways. once the mutation arises, you can think of it as a pathway that responds to insulin. once it arises it's even more sensitive to insulin and

microscopic cancers that might appear all the time just being wiped out, the immune system keeps them alive. 1 of the things in my book is to suggest cancer used to be a fairly rare disease and maybe that's because insulin resistance was fairly nonexistent and you see cancer and diabetes and obesity in the late century so it's clear that cancer is tied up in these metabolic diseases ofs obesity

and diabetes. i don't think that's controversial. insulin is a piece of the puzzle. how do we end up with more than 50 times insulin and that is the question. first and foremost it's the most worrisome part of the story. when i say sucrose, i mean, this stuff we have that's one half fructose and glucose and a sortf caused the metabolic distraction

around our internal organs that seem to cause the resistance. to me, there's a lot of nuance to this but there's one simple take away that it should be it seems to be carcinogenic and if you want to keep your insulin low, the first thing you would do is avoid the sugar. >> and basically hamburger is a processed food but ultra processed, the ingredients in the ultra processed foods the food coloring and all that. it's back to sugar and on this mission about sugar and removing it from our diet, our system has

to have a complete reworking. wouldn't it be interesting as you mentioned the word fundamentals and i've heard that many times over the years working on the fundamentals of metabolism and then we got away from that and got to the dial down of the genetics andth all these things which is amazing. but now we are going back to the sort of fundamentals. they could not have guessed what is in our food system right now otherwise he might have dialed down into this a little bit. we know sugar and ultra processed food, so what about, and i know you touch on this a little bit.

i'm a nutritionist and not dogmatic with people's eating estyles although i hope they use real food no matter what their diet is. but you talk in the book and i know another mutual friend that is into quito and you talk about low-carb. so basically how with all of these different eating styles, we have to make a decision as to what works for us. what works for you might not work for me. talk about eating styles. what are we eating that we can work through somehow other than to remove sugar and ultra processed foods for our diet? what about proteins and carbs and fats and how they tied together. i'm sure you will do books on carbohydrates and the type thereof. 1 other thing on that mode is

the whole -- i don't mean to be pitching the book but you know the metabolic protect the liver andt feed the gut. start with carbohydrates andnd bring in healthy proteins and fats. >> linking everybody up to the harms of too much sugar and diet. from my perspective, and i want to really talk about prevention. i'm not talking about cancer treatment when i talk about all this. to point strongly in a direction of insulin resistance as a causal factor so to me we have

to think of this elevated incident as a carcinogen as something that causes cancer, and if it were some sort of man-made chemical in our food or pans but the strengthening is part of our biology. it's a growth hormone ramped up to the levels it should never be. it'sic metabolic dysregulation d therefore should be avoiding that carcinogen. what you do is eat a diet which causes insulin resistance to improve because almost all of us have had it or had it. 88% of american adults at some time so if you want to avoid

that. as little effect on the insulin as possible protein causes insulin spikes. once sugar introduced the metabolic problems have.

i think that in terms of prevention and lowering insulin resistance, the best evidence suggests that he diet with proteins and low carbohydrates is key. some scientists and doctors point more towards protein and somerd towards fat but i think e agreements and the one thing you want to watch out for is too many carbohydrates. a doctor in canada said not that people can think of it like a

condiment like salt or pepper on your food but certainly don't drink it because drinking sugar seems to have the worst metabolic effect of all in part of the insulin resistance. >> people need to be very careful ideally don't eat a lot of foods with labels. brockley, frozen chicken. you have to be careful with added sugar. but carte blanche, the carbohydrate there are carbohydrates in pasta, carbohydrates and bread but then there are different types of carbohydrates. there are those meaning they've never been fashion allies did then put back together like whole-grain bread is usually taken apart and put back

together. but blueberry is our whole and intact. i think for people, sugar is a carbohydrate but i think people here carbohydrate and i'm not on a quito diet personally, but there's no root vegetables or potatoes are certain things that have the nutrients in them. there's different carbohydrates out there and everybody has a different story, but what is your take on that, or do you have an interest or research done from your perspective on types of carbohydrates other than avoiding sugar? >> it's very clear that more refined carbohydrates cause a more profound insulin spike. think about fruit bats and all these things about sugar.

most scientists are comfortable with fruit in the diet because as you talked about the cellular structure and fiber in the fruit causes the glucose to rise less dramatically and you don't get the same metabolic impact. so i don't think all carbohydrates need to be thought of as bad. you had to figure out what they call the glycemic affect. how much glucose and insulin and some people if you are metabolically healthy, there are many in that situation but if you are then i don't think you have to worry that much. i think you can tolerate a lot of carbohydrates. there are many societies in human history that are metabolically healthy. it's only after the introduction

you start to see a lot of these problems. i think you want to avoid mostly processed but each individual, you can get a pretty good sense of what's working for you looking at your body, are you losing weight. so i t don't think it has to be one-size-fits-all but to focus on more because when the insulin is lower part of what it does is traps fat inside the fat cells. if you have elevated insulin all

the time, it's getting locked in and it's just a natural response to keep insulin lower. i am only talking about cancer. >> i worked at a breast health center at a local hospital and the women would come in for treatment and we would all recommend a very low sugar diet because it was simplistically said not everybody agreed at the time but i think pretty much everybody agreed with it now. if you look at prevention a healthy guide if you want to avoid any kind of metabolic disease of course and cancer, so

healthy fats, omega-3 fatty acids and omega sixes and healthy fats and whatever kind of protein you eat, but the big thing is you recommend limiting obviously sugar. sugar we drink particularly, and staying low on the carbohydrates. and if you have cancer, that's probably even more so important. so, that's probably a little bit of the summary. for those of you that haven't read the book, we just touched on some of these details. we didn't really talk about all he did. but anyway, so really interesting and more dialed down but the take-home is watch your

sugar and know that it's everywhere and your sugary drinks and sodas and fatty liver disease. nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. the sugar metabolically speaking is a nightmare. we already talked about fiber and glucose in fruit. is insulin the culprit or the elevated sugar causing it to rise? >> that's certainly another hormone that's part of this story and there is a lot of nuance to the science but it seems to also increase the signaling so i sort of lump them together for the sake of simplicity, but i think it does

follow the elevated insulin so i just focus on the insulin when i talk about it but one of the interesting things about when i started writing this book, i thought thee whole damaging affect was by its affect onec elevated insulin and evidence that some cancers can consume the fructose directly and it is goodan at driving the affect so the case against sugar continues the bill even in the time i was working on the book. >> a fascinating book and we could talk for probably a couple more hours on this, but hopefully everybody listening will read this incredible story and how his work from this man is front and center again and to us.at means

so basically, i want to thank you so much for your comments here today and i want to thank all of you that are listening today. this program will be on the commonwealth club website again soon, commonwealth club.org and now this meeting of the commonwealth club of california commemorating its 118th year of discussions is adjourned you

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good evening. i'm the president of the library foundation of los angeles. it is my great pleasure to welcome you all this evening that has been coproduced by the council and the library foundation program. we needed to share this evening's interview not simply because we have a best-selling author, but because his