Public Dialogues

YHouse continues its program of lectures, events, and conversations on exciting and provocative topics at a number of venues around New York City.

Consciousness Club NYC

YHouse invites you to the Consciousness Club, a study group to promote broadly transdisciplinary discussions on the neural and computational bases of consciousness, and how these concepts can be applied to other fields of interest. Our weekly meetings are for you if you are into awareness, science, technology, philosophy, art, and design.

For more information and meeting schedule, check out our Facebook page, or tune in to our Twitter updates.

Although the meetings are open to all, we encourage technical and scientific discussions for this series of meetings.

Cognition Lunch Salon

YHouse continues to organize informal Lunch Salon events hosted by the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, N.J., West Building Seminar Room, 2nd floor. The format is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition. This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

  • Institute of Advanced Studies (map)

Institute of Advanced Study (West Building Seminar Room)

Speaker: Michael Solomon, MD

For the past 40 years we have thought of cancer as the result of somatic mutations in nuclear DNA that either block tumor suppressor genes or unblock oncogenes resulting in malignant transformation. But our success in understanding or in treating cancer has been sadly limited.

Thomas Seyfried and others have made a strong case that, in fact, cancer results from the loss of the cell’s ability to obtain energy (ATP) via oxidative phosphorylation, resulting in the cancer cell’s reverting to more primitive metabolic pathways and fermenting glucose (and the amino acid glutamine) even in the presence of adequate oxygen (aerobic glycolysis). This theory was originally suggested by Otto Warburg


in the 1940’s, the so-called Warburg effect. I will offer evidence supporting the possibility that malignant transformation in all cancer is a metabolic disease resulting from mitochondrial dysfunction and is not a genetic disease caused by nuclear DNA changes which occur secondarily. This leads to alternative management strategies for cancer without toxic radiation or chemotherapy.