00:00:00 We divide the group into five, and then we cover one-fifth, and each one is for 20 minutes,

00:00:19 and then we ring a bell at a 10-minute discussion, and then they have handouts.

00:00:25 Then you go on and you do the whole group at once?

00:00:29 No, no, one-fifth. Today one-fifth, next week one-fifth.

00:00:33 I see. So every five weeks it's sort of a churn.

00:00:36 Yeah, that's right. Every six weeks, you usually miss one.

00:00:43 It's becoming so broad, you see.

00:00:49 Someone even doing hematology.

00:00:51 From five, when I get to three, I'll stop and you pick up the count from there.

00:00:56 Okay.

00:00:57 Okay.

00:00:58 Okay.

00:00:59 You ready, Jeff?

00:01:01 Five, four, three.

00:01:06 In 1963, you moved to Hoko University in Sendai.

00:01:14 Tell me a little bit about that move.

00:01:16 Why did you make it? How did that offer come about?

00:01:20 Okay. Tohoku University, which is in Sendai,

00:01:27 it used to be the strongest, traditionally, historically,

00:01:30 the strongest organic department in Japan.

00:01:34 And so there was another strong group, and that is Osaka and Tohoku.

00:01:39 And there were two professors there.

00:01:41 One is Professor Nozoe, who started the whole business in Tropolons,

00:01:47 the seven-membered non-benzene-oiled aromatics.

00:01:50 And the other one is Professor Fujise, who is about to retire.

00:01:55 So obviously, I mean, when I got the offer, and according to Nozoe,

00:02:01 he likens me to you throw a bait into the pond,

00:02:07 and the first fish comes up and grabs it.

00:02:13 So you were eager for the move.

00:02:15 Yes, I was, because it was a very prestigious place, after all.

00:02:20 Lots and lots of organic chemists had come from this school.

00:02:25 So it was probably one of the most prestigious.

00:02:32 One of the problems that you worked on at Sendai,

00:02:35 and I think it was a problem you essentially inherited from Professor Fujise,

00:02:43 was the ginkgolite problem.

00:02:45 Can you tell me a little bit about that problem?

00:02:47 I looked at the article, and it's really a beautiful synthesis of a variety of approaches.

00:02:55 Yes, that is still one of my favorite achievements, if you can call it,

00:03:03 because, first of all, the structure still was correct, but we had lots of fun.

00:03:09 And I think that is the last piece of what I would call now romantic structure determinations we have done.

00:03:17 And I had inherited from Professor Fujise, and he had started doing this,

00:03:24 and I just inherited it, and then it was such a challenge, this thing.

00:03:30 The more we got to know about it, the more difficult the structure was.

00:03:36 You know, the ginkgo trees, you can find plenty of them in New York, all over this place too,

00:03:43 but these are called the fossil trees, and they become extinct during the Ice Age.

00:03:51 And we have a ginkgo forest somewhere in Canada.

00:03:57 But then they were preserved in the last thousands of years in Chinese temples,

00:04:06 and they were first exported out.

00:04:09 I think what I was told is that there was a French exhibition in the latter part of the last century,

00:04:16 where they had the Eiffel Tower.

00:04:18 That's when the ginkgo trees were introduced again.

00:04:20 That's the first time, and then from there on it spread out.

00:04:23 They were introduced to the West.

00:04:25 And Japan too, in a sense, I think.

00:04:28 And these ginkgo legs, which we called, you get the highest yield from the root box,

00:04:36 and ginkgo is still, you cannot fell those.

00:04:39 It's a beautiful tree, and you don't fell those things too often.

00:04:43 So fortunately or unfortunately, we had a big typhoon, and lots of those ginkgo trees were damaged.

00:04:51 So we went to the city office, got permission, and we cut off the roots and the root box,

00:04:57 and we had a huge stock of these ginkgo legs, so-called.

00:05:01 And those are very bitter substances.

00:05:04 And we just followed the extraction by tasting the bitterness, you see.

00:05:09 And I'll come back to the structure determination in a moment,

00:05:14 but curiously enough now, it is now one of the best-selling drugs in Europe now, the ginkgo legs.

00:05:24 And they have been found quite recently to be a very potent antagonist against the platelet activating factor.

00:05:37 What it really does is still not known, but it interferes with the prostaglandin synthesis,

00:05:44 and lots of companies have taken, becoming very interested in the ginkgo legs.

00:05:51 And anyhow, that's where it stands now, you see, so it's not unrelated to current drug.

00:05:58 But when we were doing it, we had no idea, and we had huge quantities of that, gram quantities,

00:06:05 and I counted how many derivatives.

00:06:08 We have made over 50 derivatives, and we're adjusting enormous amount of chemistry.

00:06:15 And I'll tell you an episode, which is ginkgo leg is aesthetically very beautiful cage structure.

00:06:23 And it's got three lactone rings and several hydroxy groups,

00:06:29 and the NMR is too simple, because it's either blocked with lactone rings,

00:06:34 or it's got a few quaternary carbons in which it makes the NMR proton discontinuous.

00:06:41 So it consisted of three blocks of proton system, which is unrelated.

00:06:47 Then, out of desperation, you carry out all sorts of reactions,

00:06:54 and one reaction we did was the lithium aluminum hydride reduction.

00:06:58 This one happened to be a ginkgo leg which already contained two hydroxy groups,

00:07:03 plus that you have three lactone rings.

00:07:05 You do a lithium aluminum hydride reduction, and then you get eight hydroxy groups.

00:07:11 It's an octal, and now knowing the structure, an octal,

00:07:16 which is linked to two spiral 5-5 membered ring systems.

00:07:21 And you can see it's like a spider.

00:07:24 And then no way it will be crystalline.

00:07:27 So in Japan, undergraduates are seriously involved in research.

00:07:34 It was given to an undergraduate.

00:07:36 He was simply asked to dry the sample.

00:07:39 So he left it in one of those ovens.

00:07:42 And then we went out, the whole group, for a group baseball game.

00:07:50 And when he came back, the oven was, the thermostat was not working.

00:07:55 So he had burnt and scorched all the precious sample.

00:07:59 And he was horrified.

00:08:01 But then a senior, Maruyama, who was a group leader of all the ginkgo lighting,

00:08:05 and he's got excellent hands, and he did a column chromatography,

00:08:10 and then came out these beautiful crystals, you see.

00:08:13 And that turned out to be the key intermediate.

00:08:17 What happened was you've got this octal, like two spirals,

00:08:22 and then eight hydroxy groups dangling like a spider's leg.

00:08:26 And then this spiralized, and they had reformed back to the original cage structure,

00:08:31 except that now instead of the lactone carbonyl, it became an oxygen and a methylene group.

00:08:38 Because you have the ether rings instead of...

00:08:40 Yes. So instead of tri-lactones, we had a tri-ether.

00:08:44 And the amazing thing is it cyclized back to the original beautiful structure.

00:08:51 And then this was one of my post-docs, Vince Woods.

00:09:00 And he is one of those people who never compromises.

00:09:05 And he's a delightful person, but once he's stubborn, okay?

00:09:10 And he was in charge of our NMR together with Mr. Miura, who started doing...

00:09:16 He joined my group straight out from technical high school,

00:09:20 and he was trained by Miura, by Vince Woods.

00:09:24 And these two were working on this tri-ether, what he called the ginkgo light tri-ether.

00:09:32 And this ginkgo light had this t-butyl group.

00:09:35 And then when they were desperate trying to get all the connections,

00:09:40 because now we have introduced six more hydrogens, so it becomes much more complex.

00:09:46 But as a result, you can get maybe a little bit more relationship.

00:09:51 And then these two found out that they are working throughout the night.

00:09:57 I remember once checking in after midnight that when you radiate the t-butyl group,

00:10:02 some protons, the intensity increases.

00:10:06 And if this was not Vince Woods, they would have just taken it as an error in the integrator.

00:10:14 But he said, let's repeat it over and over again until they found it was not an integrator error.

00:10:21 It was a real genuine, yes, increase in the area.

00:10:27 And then he looked into the literature, and there was just in the ESR literature

00:10:34 a thing called nuclear overhaus effect, not noticed in the NMR yet.

00:10:39 And then we started to think, oh, this must be an NMR equivalent,

00:10:44 intermolecular nuclear overhaus effect, you see.

00:10:48 So this meant that the two protons were very close by, and so on.

00:10:52 It's a through space effect?

00:10:53 Yes, through space, a proton-proton.

00:10:56 And when you hit this proton, and if they are close by, the NMR intensity of this peak goes up.

00:11:03 I see.

00:11:04 And shortly after that, just when we had recognized that it must be an NMR nuclear overhaus effect,

00:11:13 Annette and Born's first JAX communication on what is now called the NOE appeared, you see.

00:11:23 And by that time, we had all the partial structures, lots of evidence.

00:11:29 So once we knew what the NOE was, then I think about a month later, we got the whole structure correctly.

00:11:39 But then I found out that, and then we published this in a series of papers,

00:11:44 and the last paper, I haven't reread it recently, but we do, it's devoted to NOE,

00:11:51 and we say, we don't even mention NOE, we see an unusual effect encountered when you radiate this,

00:11:58 the other proton intensity goes up.

00:12:00 It's described in that way.

00:12:02 But then I found out that another group in Japan was doing, had just finished X-ray.

00:12:09 And I didn't like this too much, because they knew that we were doing the structure determination and so on, you see.

00:12:17 But anyhow, they said that they had the structure.

00:12:22 So I was not happy, but one of my colleagues, Professor Kakizawa, he volunteered to become the mediator.

00:12:34 And it was one day apart.

00:12:38 The X-ray told that they had the structure, and the next day, we had the structure.

00:12:45 So Kakizawa was in Tokyo, the other group was another city, we were in another city,

00:12:52 and so the X-ray group first called Kakizawa over the telephone,

00:12:56 and describing that ginkgolite structure over the telephone.

00:13:00 And you can imagine, it's extremely difficult.

00:13:03 Yes, it's very complicated.

00:13:04 Yes, and then we did the same thing.

00:13:06 And then he had them scribbled out, and he had to make molecular models out of the two structures.

00:13:11 And then he found out that the two structures were the same.

00:13:15 That's how it was.

00:13:17 And so we discovered many interesting chemical reactions and so on.

00:13:23 But it is very nice, because we had enough material, lots of chemistry, coupled with NMR, we had lots of fun.

00:13:31 And that's why I call it, it's a romantic, it reminds me of the old German years.

00:13:38 Having lots of material is something that you haven't had for a long time.

00:13:42 And I might just add a few things.

00:13:46 What happened since then, as I mentioned, the French company has found that it is very active as the antagonist against the plated acting factor.

00:13:56 It is sold as a drug, so-called, not as a modern pharmaceutical.

00:14:04 But it's been sold, and it's the best-selling in Europe.

00:14:09 And I was surprised.

00:14:11 I met last year...

00:14:13 It was sort of over-the-counter.

00:14:14 Yes.

00:14:15 I see.

00:14:16 As a folk remedy.

00:14:19 And I met a friend of mine, a chemist from Dublin.

00:14:22 And she was commissioned by this French group to extract huge amounts of the ginkgo, ginkgo lice from the ginkgo tree.

00:14:30 And then I was invited to the University of Heidelberg last...

00:14:37 This was November, I think.

00:14:40 And four of us, four chemists.

00:14:43 And it was the 600th anniversary of the Heidelberg.

00:14:47 And they had a one-day meeting.

00:14:50 And I was one of the speakers.

00:14:52 And E.J. Corey was another speaker.

00:14:55 And we were sitting side by side.

00:14:58 And I gave my talk.

00:15:01 And then he kept on asking me,

00:15:04 Koji, you must have heard me giving this talk before.

00:15:08 I'm sure it's going to be boring for you.

00:15:10 And he showed me two slides, you see, which is black.

00:15:12 I hardly had time to...

00:15:14 And my memory is very poor, so I didn't know whether to say yes or no,

00:15:18 especially when the question is put that way.

00:15:21 You must have heard it before, and then it must be boring.

00:15:24 But please, stay with me.

00:15:27 And then he goes up.

00:15:29 And the first thing he says is,

00:15:31 I would like to dedicate this talk to my good friend Koji Nakanishi.

00:15:34 And it was his first public announcement of the ginkgolite total synthesis.

00:15:39 And that is very nice of him.

00:15:41 And so, at the Heidelberg meeting.

00:15:43 So he's finished his total synthesis.

00:15:46 And now this French company has come out with a huge compendium of ginkgolite papers.

00:15:55 And I suppose by the preface and the synthesis of this,

00:15:59 and the rest is all medicinal.

00:16:01 That's what it is.

00:16:03 That's kind of nice.

00:16:05 Ginkgolite, just one thing is it's so stable.

00:16:08 And you get big crystals like this.

00:16:11 And you can put it in boiling nitric acid,

00:16:14 evaporate off the nitric acid,

00:16:16 and it remains untouched.

00:16:18 So it'll make a nice pendant, I think.

00:16:22 It's almost surprising that it's so stable,

00:16:26 because it has all those lactone rings.

00:16:32 This marked a different type of science as well.

00:16:37 Because in that work, there were several groups that were working on it.

00:16:42 I think you were getting support from Takeda at that particular time.

00:16:47 I think you thanked them in the paper.

00:16:51 In a sense, it's your entry into bigger science.

00:16:55 That is, the work with various people contributing.

00:17:01 How do you feel about now having interdisciplinary projects,

00:17:06 or projects in which a number of experts come to bear on a single problem?

00:17:12 Well, okay.

00:17:14 At that time, Takeda Company, when I was still at Tokyo,

00:17:20 they came to my office.

00:17:22 It was out of nowhere.

00:17:24 I was very grateful.

00:17:25 They said, we'd like to support your research.

00:17:28 And so, of course, we started an intimate relation.

00:17:32 And when I moved to Tohoku Sendai,

00:17:35 as many other groups were doing,

00:17:41 we went for so-called, quote-unquote,

00:17:44 anti-cancer drugs and the screening type.

00:17:49 Now I don't do that type of chemistry.

00:17:52 With Takeda's help,

00:17:56 I, myself, went to several places on plant collection trips

00:18:01 to Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Okinawa, various places.

00:18:06 And we had a sort of, like the way that Maurice Kopchan used to do,

00:18:11 a set isolation scheme,

00:18:14 and send the crude extracts to Takeda.

00:18:17 And we screened for anti-tumor compounds.

00:18:19 And, well, not surprisingly, nothing came out.

00:18:23 But one of the things which came out of that,

00:18:26 which is it was a form of podocarpus.

00:18:30 It's a tree which grows in deep mountains in Taiwan.

00:18:34 And it was reputed to have some anti-cancer activity,

00:18:40 according to the Chinese-Taiwanese folk medicine.

00:18:44 So we extracted that.

00:18:46 And then we got some new material, a fair amount of it.

00:18:54 So it was given to Kore Eda, who was at that time...

00:18:59 He's now a professor at Michigan.

00:19:04 He was an undergraduate.

00:19:06 And he worked on this.

00:19:08 And he did a beautiful job,

00:19:10 an undergraduate for his master's degree.

00:19:14 By that time, we had the structure of this compound.

00:19:18 It was a tremendous mixture, but anyhow, he got the structure.

00:19:21 And then it turned out to be a polyhydroxysteroid.

00:19:25 And we thought that before we publish this,

00:19:28 we'd better make sure that it's a new one,

00:19:30 it's not published in the literature.

00:19:33 And then it happens that just about two months earlier,

00:19:42 a paper had appeared in Berichte,

00:19:45 which described the structure of ectison,

00:19:48 which is the universal crustacean and insect-molting hormone.

00:19:53 And we checked it, and there was only one difference,

00:19:56 a difference in only one hydroxy group.

00:19:59 So I had nothing, no knowledge about what ectisis meant,

00:20:05 and all these things.

00:20:07 But I finally found out it meant shedding of skins.

00:20:10 So we contacted Takeda Company and Dennis Horn in Australia,

00:20:17 and one other place, to have its activity tested.

00:20:22 And then we got very exciting calls

00:20:25 that it's 10 times more active than the natural ectison.

00:20:30 And at that time, ectison was started by Butenant.

00:20:40 And Butenant, who is still alive now,

00:20:42 he's the first one to isolate the human.

00:20:46 He got a Nobel Prize when he was in his early 30s, I think.

00:20:49 He clarified all the human sex hormones,

00:20:51 and he was the first one to isolate the first insect pheromone,

00:20:56 which is bombicol, and now the ectison.

00:20:59 And I remember him coming to Japan and giving three talks,

00:21:03 where once every two years he came,

00:21:06 and every talk was on ectison,

00:21:08 and slowly the structure becoming clarified.

00:21:11 But finally it had to be done by X-ray.

00:21:15 So it was very exciting,

00:21:17 and they tell me that it's 10 times more active.

00:21:19 And that got me, at that time,

00:21:22 the moment the structure was published in Berichte,

00:21:25 several companies, American and German companies, synthesized this.

00:21:29 And if I remember, it was a milligram cost at that time.

00:21:32 It was in the late 60s, $100 a milligram.

00:21:36 And we had from this Taiwan plant about 10 grams of the compound,

00:21:40 which is 10 times more active.

00:21:42 And then I got invited to...

00:21:44 That's my first encounter with insect physiologists,

00:21:47 the so-called encounter with interdisciplinary-type people,

00:21:51 and a meeting which was organized by what is now the Zoycon company,

00:21:57 which was Synthetical Gerasi, and that stuff.

00:22:01 And Carol Williams was there, and we had an Asilomar meeting,

00:22:05 and that's when I announced this thing.

00:22:08 And, of course, the entomologists were shocked

00:22:12 that this insect hormone existed widely in the plant in larger quantities.

00:22:17 And that got me in touch with so-called insect physiologists.

00:22:21 And ever since I've been staying in the insect field,

00:22:25 I still continue some research on ectison.

00:22:28 And gradually I moved into other interdisciplinary areas too.

00:22:34 But that was my first encounter.

00:22:37 Now...

00:22:38 Is this recent work on the crab molting factor,

00:22:43 is that related to the ectison work?

00:22:46 Yes, in a sense, yes.

00:22:48 Okay.

00:22:51 I don't know if I can go on to this.

00:22:53 I can go on and on forever.

00:22:55 No, we probably better go back to the chronological move.

00:23:01 After five or six years at Tohoku,

00:23:07 then it appeared as though it was time to move on again.

00:23:12 You came to Colombia in 1969.

00:23:15 How did that move come about?

00:23:19 What prompted you to leave Japan?

00:23:23 I don't know.

00:23:24 Should I go through the episodes and think like that or skip it?

00:23:28 There were some very unusual happenings.

00:23:30 That's a nice story too, and you can tell it,

00:23:33 at least for historical purposes.

00:23:35 I think it's enjoyable.

00:23:38 By the time I...

00:23:41 In the late 60s, my group in Japan,

00:23:43 I had a group of about 45, well-funded and so on.

00:23:48 I had no reason to leave Japan,

00:23:50 except that I was getting a little bit tireless

00:23:52 because basically I don't like the Japanese hierarchical system.

00:23:59 Besides that, we were having a sports day,

00:24:02 and we split my group into several small groups.

00:24:07 We were having volleyball, basketball, and baseball.

00:24:11 I was at the batting.

00:24:14 I was a batter and swung the bat.

00:24:16 I was never a good baseball player,

00:24:18 but the moment I did it, something snapped in my back.

00:24:22 I had this lumbago you call, hernia, spine hernia,

00:24:30 and it fell flat.

00:24:33 The students got very worried.

00:24:35 It was such an extent that even if someone touched my tip of the fingers,

00:24:39 it immediately came to my spine.

00:24:42 My home was very close by, walking distance.

00:24:45 They put me on a stretcher, took me home,

00:24:47 and they said, turning over, it won't kill him, and so on.

00:24:53 They got in touch with the hospital,

00:24:55 and they turned me back over because I was lying with my face down

00:25:00 since I left the grounds.

00:25:03 They turned me over, flipped me over,

00:25:05 and on a stretcher again, walking towards the hospital,

00:25:10 which is, again, another walking distance, about 15 minutes,

00:25:13 and all the students following like a funeral.

00:25:16 Then they put me in a hospital,

00:25:18 and then the nurse, they have no mercy,

00:25:22 and they flipped me over and so on.

00:25:24 They told me that you have to stay in the hospital

00:25:26 for at least, I think, six weeks with weight on your legs

00:25:31 so that you're stretched out.

00:25:33 This I could not stand.

00:25:36 My wife, in the meantime, got in touch with someone,

00:25:39 a friend of mine in Tokyo who happens to be the president

00:25:42 of the Japan Spectroscopic Company.

00:25:44 He immediately sent that day from Tokyo a chiropractor,

00:25:50 and my son was watching out of the hospital room

00:25:53 so that the nurse won't come in,

00:25:57 and the chiropractor got onto the bed and started doing this.

00:26:01 Tremendous, of course, ache, I mean hurting,

00:26:05 but then after 10 minutes, I could, even wobbling,

00:26:10 and stand up and put my, with the arms on the nurse's shoulders,

00:26:17 and I could start walking, you see.

00:26:19 So I said I wouldn't stand in this space,

00:26:21 and I have an important, I'm expecting a long distance,

00:26:27 called international one tonight,

00:26:29 and I have to be at home all night.

00:26:33 So, and I said I'm definitely going home.

00:26:37 They didn't like it, but I went home,

00:26:40 and it happens that that night I did get a long distance call.

00:26:44 It was from Manchester, and Arthur Birch,

00:26:48 he had just retired, and they are looking for a successor,

00:26:52 and out from nowhere, they said,

00:26:54 would you like to come to Manchester to succeed Arthur Birch?

00:26:59 And it was a sheer coincidence,

00:27:03 and that got me interested in looking outside of Japan.

00:27:08 So, well, Manchester, I said, yes, let me think,

00:27:12 and then I started getting some other invitations,

00:27:17 once people knew that you were interested.

00:27:20 And before that, I checked with my senior Japanese professors,

00:27:25 because Japan is a very conservative society,

00:27:28 how they would react to this,

00:27:30 and these are four or five professors whom I respect.

00:27:33 Not everyone said I should leave Japan,

00:27:36 and I think they wanted to test me like a guinea pig,

00:27:40 how a Japanese product would behave outside of Japan.

00:27:44 And so I decided, and then I contacted, well, close friends,

00:27:49 Carl Gerasi, Gilbert Stork, and then Gilbert said,

00:27:53 would it be interesting coming to Columbia, and so on.

00:27:56 So I finally narrowed this down to Columbia University and Manchester,

00:28:01 and I went to, I think I visited both places two times.

00:28:05 I still couldn't make up my mind,

00:28:07 and the university at Tohoku, they got sick of me procrastinating,

00:28:13 and said, you have to give your reply tomorrow.

00:28:16 So that night, 2 o'clock in the morning,

00:28:19 all the students who, it makes a big difference,

00:28:22 because they were either going to move to New York or to Manchester.

00:28:25 By that time, I had already settled down on a house,

00:28:28 I would live in Manchester, and so on,

00:28:30 and because England would be easier, I thought,

00:28:34 I knew America, you don't have any lieutenants,

00:28:37 and no one you see, but India, in England,

00:28:40 it's a more pyramidal system, and you have assistants, and so on.

00:28:46 So I was more or less set my mind to go there, 90% or more, I would say.

00:28:51 Then I just wanted to check one minor point,

00:28:54 and that was about my housing for one, just one postdoc.

00:28:57 It was not settled.

00:28:59 And then the chairman of the Manchester department

00:29:02 happened to be out of town, so a good friend of mine, John Bulock,

00:29:05 said, I'm sure we can say yes to your answer,

00:29:07 but I cannot give you 100% answer.

00:29:10 And then soon after that, the phone rang from Columbia,

00:29:13 Gilbert Stork and Ron Reslow.

00:29:15 What happened? Are you coming or not, you see?

00:29:17 So I couldn't decide yet.

00:29:19 I told them, give me 20 more minutes, and then I'll decide.

00:29:22 So I thought, I must make up my mind in 20 minutes,

00:29:24 because following that, I have to give my final answer to the university also.

00:29:29 Then, so we think I still couldn't make up my mind.

00:29:34 So this time I picked up the phone to New York

00:29:38 and told them that I would visit Columbia once more.

00:29:44 And Gilbert and Ron had gone out for lunch,

00:29:48 and the message was to a secretary.

00:29:51 And she misinterpreted my message.

00:29:54 And when Gilbert and Ron came back,

00:29:57 she apparently had told them that I had decided to come to Columbia.

00:30:00 What I really meant was I would just pay one more visit.

00:30:03 So the next phone call from Gilbert and Ron is,

00:30:07 hey, you're coming to Columbia, welcome to Columbia,

00:30:10 and then blah, blah, blah, and all these quick-speaking New Yorkers, you see.

00:30:14 And by that time, it's about 3 o'clock in the morning.

00:30:17 I was exhausted. Oh, I'll go to Columbia.

00:30:20 Nice.

00:30:22 Very unusual, starting from this little embargo and everything.

00:30:26 But I don't regret it.

00:30:30 Well, shortly after you came to Columbia,

00:30:33 you also became involved with the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya.

00:30:41 And how did that come about, and what was the purpose of the institute?

00:30:46 Carl Geraci, he wrote in Science or Nature, I think, a general philosophical article,

00:30:54 saying that what happens if we set up a first-rate institute in so-called third-world countries,

00:31:02 and then we'll have the first-rate scientists coming there as visiting scientists

00:31:08 and utilizing the natural, whatever benefits you get from being in that country,

00:31:16 as well as educating and contributing to leveling up.

00:31:20 And it was to that letter that Tom Odhiambo, who responded.

00:31:26 Tom Odhiambo is a very intelligent entomologist who is from Uganda,

00:31:35 but he was in Kenya at that time.

00:31:38 And so Carl got together, and then the various academies,

00:31:44 and since I was a natural product chemist, he asked myself and another natural product chemist, Jerry Meinwald,

00:31:51 whether we would be interested in joining this embryonic whatever is going to happen.

00:31:58 No one knew what was going to happen to these kind of things.

00:32:01 Then that's how it started, and it is called, probably it's called

00:32:05 the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, ICPE, which is stationed in Kenya, Nairobi.

00:32:14 And I was involved with Jerry Meinwald as a group leader,

00:32:20 which in its old British terminology is called a research director, from 69 to 70.

00:32:29 The moment I joined Columbia, I got involved in this sort of thing.

00:32:33 And I was in the, well, in charge of the chemistry unit, you see.

00:32:39 And that's when we were supposed to work on interdisciplinary things.

00:32:45 And the other unit, there are several biology, entomology units,

00:32:49 from Germany, Holland, Switzerland, America, and so on.

00:32:54 But we tried to work together jointly with the biologists.

00:32:59 But setting up a new institute, putting in all the equipment and the insectary and so on,

00:33:06 it takes a long, lots of time.

00:33:09 And also the biologists' timescale and the chemists' timescale is different.

00:33:14 And you can expedite the reaction by catalyzing it or boiling it, but you can't boil insects.

00:33:21 So we started working on some independent subjects.

00:33:25 And we thought that the best way was to work on some plant products,

00:33:29 which have some effects on insects.

00:33:32 And that's how we got into so-called insect antifedons,

00:33:37 which are deterrents for insects, and they stop eating.

00:33:44 That's how it started.

00:33:47 And since then, okay, shall I go a little bit into insect antifedons?

00:33:51 You could. Yes, yes, that might be a good idea.

00:33:54 Okay.

00:33:56 Insect antifedon studies, in definition, it's a thing which when insect licks it,

00:34:02 the appetite of the insect goes down, okay, and it reduced.

00:34:07 And there were some studies before that also, insect antifedons.

00:34:13 But being in Africa and surrounded with tropical forests, we were in a good position.

00:34:19 And I was joined by Isao Kubo, who was sent to this institute as a Japanese government,

00:34:28 on a Japanese government grant.

00:34:31 And he's amazing, a natural product with good instincts.

00:34:38 He's got a good smell.

00:34:40 And he soon learned the Swahili language,

00:34:44 and he got in touch with various what we call the local medical doctors,

00:34:49 witch doctors, not a good way to say it.

00:34:53 And then they told him this plant was so-and-so and so-and-so, this is good for insects.

00:34:58 And we started a rather systematic study of insect antifedons.

00:35:04 Before Isao came, I also got involved in another one, which is now a very famous antifedon.

00:35:10 It's called azadirachtin, and this comes from the Indian neem tree,

00:35:15 and it is still the most potent insect antifedon known.

00:35:19 Azadirachtin, there's even some international conferences dealing with the neem tree.

00:35:24 Even now, every two years it's held.

00:35:28 And so we got into systematic studies of insect antifedons.

00:35:33 And then Isao spent his two years at Nairobi,

00:35:40 and then he came to Colombia, I think it must have been in the early 70s or something,

00:35:46 and he was planning to spend just six months at Colombia

00:35:49 to get all the structures of some of the compounds isolated, clarified.

00:35:55 It ended up in a four-year stay,

00:35:58 and during that time we published together many, many papers.

00:36:02 And I think that must have contributed to a certain extent

00:36:06 to the interest of the antifedon in the general scientific community, you see.

00:36:11 And some of the most, it's called wabuganal.

00:36:15 The two, azadirachtin is the strongest, wabuganal is another strong one,

00:36:20 and it's simple, and many groups have made it.

00:36:23 But I'm out of this now because after four years or five years at Colombia,

00:36:28 Isao fortunately got a position in the entomology department at Berkeley,

00:36:33 and he's currently a full professor there,

00:36:35 and he's surrounded in the best working environment

00:36:38 because they're all entomologists around him.

00:36:40 So I have discontinued this.

00:36:43 Does he still do organic chemistry as well?

00:36:45 Oh, yeah.

00:36:46 And now he's expanding to Brazil, and he becomes itchy

00:36:50 if he doesn't go to Africa or Brazil, Amazons, once a year at least.

00:36:55 And he's very active, finding many interesting compounds.

00:37:00 To give you an idea, it's called wabuganal,

00:37:04 but what it does is it's a very simple sesquiterpenoid.

00:37:08 And you put it on, it's an army worm, it's a worldwide pest,

00:37:14 and African army worm would devastate a whole cornfield.

00:37:19 And it's called the army worm because when the sun sets,

00:37:22 it advances to the next batch of corn during the nighttime, and advances.

00:37:32 And wabuganal was taken from an African tree,

00:37:38 which the local people use as a hot spice.

00:37:42 It's called wabuga ugandensis.

00:37:45 It's a tree.

00:37:46 It comes from the bark, and it's got a very pleasant hot taste,

00:37:49 and they use it to spice their soup and so on.

00:37:53 And we isolate this wabuganal, which we called,

00:37:57 and you can just apply it on a corn leaf,

00:38:06 and then put the army worm caterpillar on it.

00:38:09 And about 20 minutes later, you remove it, an untreated corn leaf,

00:38:14 and its taste buds have stopped functioning, and it'll starve to death.

00:38:20 And this wabuganal, because the local people always put it in the soup

00:38:27 for spicing their food, it's known that it doesn't have any acute toxicity.

00:38:34 So nothing commercial has come out yet from these antiphedons,

00:38:39 but there is a very, I think, a rather considerable interest

00:38:44 in what can be done with antiphedons.

00:38:53 One of the other spectroscopic techniques that you developed

00:38:57 or that you made great use of was circular dichroism,

00:39:02 and how did you get started in circular dichroism?

00:39:07 I think there are several of these, what you call a rediscovery.

00:39:14 And chromatography was one of them,

00:39:18 which I think it was Kuhn, Richard Kuhn, rediscovered in the 1930s.

00:39:25 It was first used by Tsvet, he's a botanist.

00:39:30 The same applies to circular dichroism,

00:39:33 and another word was optical rotatory dispersion.

00:39:36 And optical ORD and CD were both very commonly used in the last century

00:39:42 until the sodium D-line or the Bunsen burner was discovered by Bunsen,

00:39:48 and that changed everything to the sodium D-line rotation measurements,

00:39:52 which doesn't mean much.

00:39:54 And Carl Gerasi started, reintroduced the optical rotatory dispersion,

00:40:00 and then Verloes and Lucrande at the Rousseau-Lucraf

00:40:10 started the circular dichroism.

00:40:12 And that happened in the late 50s.

00:40:17 And then that is CD.

00:40:19 And I introduced this, Carl's and these two people's optical,

00:40:26 chiroptical methods, I translated lots of their papers

00:40:29 and wrote a review article in Japanese.

00:40:31 But besides that, when I went to Sendai,

00:40:36 I somehow asked Harada, who is now a professor in Japan,

00:40:41 and he still is the leader in this field,

00:40:45 to come out with if there is any simple way in which to define

00:40:50 the chirality of a glycol.

00:40:54 Whether you have two alpha glycols, you have an alpha glycol,

00:40:58 and whether it's like in absolute sense,

00:41:01 whether it's twisted this sense or this way.

00:41:03 I see.

00:41:04 Okay?

00:41:05 So this was his, he happens to be a classmate of this Harada.

00:41:09 Okay, so he was also an undergraduate at that time.

00:41:11 Yes, undergraduate.

00:41:12 And so he started making acetonides

00:41:15 and measuring the optical rotatory dispersion,

00:41:20 and we came to no clear-cut conclusions.

00:41:24 Then all of a sudden one day he says,

00:41:26 I made a benzoate, a dibenzoate,

00:41:29 and it appears as if the benzoate, you get a split CD,

00:41:34 and the sign of the split CD is in agreement

00:41:39 with the absolute sense of twist of the dibenzoate grouping.

00:41:45 And that's how we got into this.

00:41:48 And Harada is one of those rare people who can design a synthesis

00:41:53 and also he's got a profound knowledge in optical activity,

00:41:58 theoretical calculations.

00:42:00 And so the two of us since then, we've gone into this field,

00:42:05 and I think it's got immense future.

00:42:09 Somehow the organic chemists have a psychological barrier,

00:42:14 you see, some inferiority complex almost.

00:42:17 The moment they see, they hear about CD,

00:42:21 and they say, no, I had enough of that.

00:42:24 And I think one big reason is because it's been unlike NMR,

00:42:29 which is like solving a puzzle,

00:42:34 but chiroptical property is not.

00:42:36 You only have two answers.

00:42:38 It's either going to be, if you use it for determination,

00:42:40 absolute configurations, okay?

00:42:42 It's either ROS, and you can either be wrong or correct.

00:42:46 And some people, some papers make two mistakes in succession

00:42:50 and you come up with the right answer.

00:42:52 And plus that, lots of it is based on empirical data.

00:42:58 And empirical data, of course, is not pleasant because it's all hand-waving.

00:43:03 But the method that Harada and myself have developed,

00:43:07 which we call the exiton chirality method,

00:43:10 is based on the coupled oscillator theory,

00:43:13 which was developed in the 1930s.

00:43:16 It's on a firm, theoretical, non-empirical ground.

00:43:21 And together with the bifurcate X-ray method,

00:43:27 which is for crystals, and this our method,

00:43:30 which you call the coupled oscillator method,

00:43:32 no, the exiton chirality method,

00:43:35 are the only two non-empirical methods

00:43:38 in which one can define the absolute configuration.

00:43:42 And there's immense, I think, future for this.

00:43:44 And I don't understand the mathematics, so I'm also thinking like that.

00:43:49 But when I say that I can use it, it means that it's a very simple method.

00:43:55 Okay.

00:43:57 That's reasonable.

00:44:00 Maybe we should take a...

00:44:03 You want to stop? He wants to stop. Okay.

00:44:05 I was going to...

00:44:12 He can cut out a lot of things later on.

00:44:43 If you've got...

00:44:45 Since we've got the cards.

00:44:46 That's what I was about to say.

00:44:48 But I'll just...

00:44:54 Oh, I see. Okay.

00:44:55 Okay.

00:44:56 And we're going to continue some other day.

00:44:58 Yeah, and we'll do some of the other things.

00:45:01 Yeah, I think that's enough, too.

00:45:02 Sorry, am I going into too much detail?

00:45:04 I'm sorry, the damage has already been done.

00:45:08 Okay.

00:45:10 We were talking about...

00:45:11 We were speaking about...

00:45:12 What was it?

00:45:13 The last subject.

00:45:16 Oh, we were talking about the CD.

00:45:17 Oh, the CD.

00:45:18 The CD.

00:45:19 That's right.

00:45:20 The book's out now.

00:45:22 Yeah.

00:45:37 Okay.

00:45:43 Five, four, three...

00:45:49 You're not only known internationally as a chemist,

00:45:52 and a very fine chemist,

00:45:53 but you're also well-known throughout the chemical community as a magician,

00:45:58 and not even an amateur magician anymore.

00:46:01 People all over have been amazed by your feats.

00:46:06 How did that start?

00:46:08 Yeah.

00:46:10 I have one...

00:46:12 This is when I was in the high teens.

00:46:14 I have one card trick which still no one has figured out,

00:46:19 and I've only told it to my wife,

00:46:21 and she thinks it's based on such a stupid principle it's not going to work,

00:46:25 but it's true, it's working.

00:46:29 And that, of course, I perform this one card trick at parties,

00:46:34 and my friends compliment,

00:46:37 and whenever you're complimented it tickles your ego,

00:46:41 and then I start going more and more into tricks, you see.

00:46:45 And ever since I came to this...

00:46:47 Well, and then I started giving this at parties, chemical parties,

00:46:51 and then coming to the states and international meetings and so on,

00:46:55 and if you keep on pressed, and you have to add new things.

00:47:03 And so as a result, my repertoire now is quite broad.

00:47:10 I cover a lot of things, including stage magics.

00:47:14 There's something you could show me.

00:47:16 Yeah, well, I'll just show you.

00:47:18 I don't always carry this with me.

00:47:22 This is a new deck of cards, okay?

00:47:25 I'm going to shuffle this now,

00:47:28 and you can shuffle this if you want.

00:47:32 It's completely new.

00:47:38 I'll just do one.

00:47:41 Now, I just want to just make sure to get that out.

00:47:47 Just get that out.

00:47:54 Oh, no, this one, okay.

00:48:00 Now, what do I do?

00:48:07 Okay, now just take a card.

00:48:09 You can take one or two cards.

00:48:11 It doesn't matter. Just take any card you want.

00:48:13 Okay, well...

00:48:15 Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't do anything.

00:48:19 Okay, I'll give this back to you,

00:48:21 and just put it back any place you want,

00:48:24 and you can mix it up.

00:48:27 Mix it up.

00:48:29 I'll do one more if we have time, but...

00:48:31 Okay.

00:48:32 Okay, give it to me, okay?

00:48:33 I'll just mix it up.

00:48:46 Okay, now what I've done is,

00:48:48 this is a new deck of cards,

00:48:49 and I've taken a card.

00:48:52 No, you've taken a card.

00:48:55 New deck of cards, I shuffled.

00:48:57 You've taken a card,

00:48:58 and I've given you the remainder of the deck.

00:49:01 You put it someplace,

00:49:03 and you mixed it back again, okay?

00:49:05 Now, no, I don't think so.

00:49:08 I'll use the other deck.

00:49:10 I don't think...

00:49:11 Sorry, sometimes I don't have another deck.

00:49:14 Where is it now?

00:49:17 Here.

00:49:19 I'll do it with this deck.

00:49:20 Oh, all right.

00:49:26 Okay, nothing, okay?

00:49:29 Yes.

00:49:31 What card did you pick up?

00:49:32 Just tell me.

00:49:33 It was the five of spades.

00:49:35 Okay, like this, okay?

00:49:36 Watch.

00:49:40 Okay, five of spades.

00:49:44 Okay.

00:49:46 And this is...

00:49:51 I can do one more if it's...

00:49:54 Sure.

00:49:55 Okay, I'll do another one.

00:49:58 This time, you take it, mix it up.

00:50:00 Okay.

00:50:01 Take any card you want.

00:50:02 That's a new deck.

00:50:04 I'll just put this back.

00:50:07 And I'll do a variation.

00:50:11 I'm going to use this.

00:50:14 Take it.

00:50:15 Okay, hold on a second.

00:50:19 I'm having a hard time following you.

00:50:22 I see.

00:50:27 I should do it...

00:50:28 I'll multiply it for you.

00:50:36 This time, if it's...

00:50:38 I won't move too much.

00:50:39 I'll just do it here.

00:50:41 Okay, that's...

00:50:42 Okay?

00:50:43 Yeah.

00:50:44 Sorry, I forgot that...

00:50:47 Well, he's got his own thing.

00:50:50 I see.

00:50:51 I'll just use this portion this time.

00:50:53 I'm going to use this surface.

00:50:56 Okay?

00:50:57 Wow, it's the first time.

00:51:00 First time on TV.

00:51:03 Okay, what am I supposed to do here?

00:51:05 Can I do it now?

00:51:07 No.

00:51:08 Oh, you tell us when we can start.

00:51:10 Okay.

00:51:11 Here, you know what?

00:51:12 Move the...

00:51:13 You only need one deck here?

00:51:14 Yeah.

00:51:15 Why don't you move these?

00:51:21 I'm going to perform here.

00:51:24 Okay?

00:51:25 Can you get a fairly good...

00:51:27 You're going to zoom in.

00:51:28 I better be careful.

00:51:30 Try to keep it on.

00:51:31 Huh?

00:51:32 Try to keep it on.

00:51:33 Yeah.

00:51:36 Hold it right there.

00:51:43 I'll do it a little slower, too, this time.

00:51:46 I just don't want to go like this.

00:51:48 Okay.

00:51:49 Five, four, three...

00:51:54 Okay.

00:51:55 What would you like me to do with this one?

00:51:57 You can shuffle it.

00:51:58 Okay.

00:51:59 Mix it.

00:52:00 Okay.

00:52:01 You can do whatever you want.

00:52:02 Okay.

00:52:03 This is a new deck of cards, okay?

00:52:05 I remind you, just fresh from the market.

00:52:07 Take it out.

00:52:08 Okay.

00:52:09 And then I'm just going to...

00:52:10 Remember that, please, okay?

00:52:11 Okay.

00:52:12 Okay, now put it back here.

00:52:14 Okay?

00:52:15 Now...

00:52:17 And I'm going to...

00:52:19 Like this.

00:52:26 I just want to have a look at the...

00:52:33 Now, mix it totally.

00:52:36 Just by...

00:52:37 No, you can do whatever you want.

00:52:38 Just spread it out.

00:52:39 Just complete mixture.

00:52:46 So...

00:52:48 I'm not very good at it.

00:52:50 Okay.

00:52:51 Let me do it this way.

00:52:53 It doesn't matter.

00:52:54 Okay.

00:52:55 Fine.

00:52:56 Okay.

00:52:57 So what's happened is you have this deck, you mixed it, you took a card, okay?

00:53:02 Yes.

00:53:03 And put it back.

00:53:04 Right.

00:53:05 And then...

00:53:06 We mixed it again.

00:53:07 You mixed it again.

00:53:08 Right.

00:53:09 That's...

00:53:10 Okay?

00:53:11 Right.

00:53:12 I've hardly touched...

00:53:13 The only thing I did was I looked at the bottom card.

00:53:14 Okay.

00:53:15 But...

00:53:16 And let me see now.

00:53:24 It's the first time I'm doing this with you.

00:53:29 Maybe I made a mistake.

00:53:36 Maybe I'm in trouble.

00:53:37 Wait a minute.

00:53:38 Wait a minute.

00:53:40 Yes, yes, yes.

00:53:48 I'm sorry.

00:53:56 Okay.

00:53:57 Now...

00:54:03 I'm going to ask you...

00:54:05 I'm going to show you four cards.

00:54:07 Just tell me whether it's yes or no.

00:54:09 Okay?

00:54:10 You mean on each card or...

00:54:11 No.

00:54:12 Four chances.

00:54:13 Yes.

00:54:14 Okay.

00:54:15 Okay.

00:54:16 Ten of diamonds?

00:54:17 No.

00:54:18 No.

00:54:19 Okay.

00:54:20 Not ten of diamonds?

00:54:21 No.

00:54:22 Okay.

00:54:23 I put this here.

00:54:24 Ten of diamonds.

00:54:25 I'm sorry.

00:54:26 It's not well mixed.

00:54:27 Seven of diamonds?

00:54:28 No.

00:54:29 No.

00:54:30 Seven of...

00:54:31 No.

00:54:32 Okay.

00:54:33 Two more chances.

00:54:34 Four of spades?

00:54:35 No.

00:54:36 Okay.

00:54:37 The last one.

00:54:38 Nine of spades?

00:54:39 No.

00:54:40 Okay.

00:54:42 Nine of spades?

00:54:43 No.

00:54:44 Hmm.

00:54:45 Wait a minute.

00:54:46 Nine of spades, four of spades, ten of diamonds.

00:54:49 This was another diamond, right?

00:54:51 Yes.

00:54:52 I forgot what...

00:54:53 Right.

00:54:54 It was a seven.

00:54:55 Seven?

00:54:56 Okay.

00:54:57 Well, it's not here.

00:54:58 Tell me the number.

00:54:59 Only the number.

00:55:00 It was a nine.

00:55:01 Ah.

00:55:02 No, I made a mistake.

00:55:03 No, I'm sorry.

00:55:04 We have to...

00:55:05 Yeah.

00:55:06 Look.

00:55:07 What happened was...

00:55:08 I thought it was an eight.

00:55:09 I picked up all eights.

00:55:10 You want to try that again?

00:55:11 Yeah, I'll do it again.

00:55:12 It's...

00:55:13 I thought...

00:55:14 It never happened before, but...

00:55:15 Okay.

00:55:16 Okay.

00:55:17 That didn't happen.

00:55:18 Yeah.

00:55:19 Yeah.

00:55:20 That was pretty amazing all in itself.

00:55:21 There were all eights there.

00:55:22 All right.

00:55:23 I'm ready.

00:55:24 Sorry for that.

00:55:25 Get ready, sis.

00:55:26 I'm ready.

00:55:27 Still rolling?

00:55:28 I'm ready.

00:55:29 I'm ready.

00:55:30 I'm ready.

00:55:31 I'm ready.

00:55:32 I'm ready.

00:55:33 I'm ready.

00:55:34 I'm ready.

00:55:35 I'm ready.

00:55:36 I'm ready.

00:55:38 Okay.

00:55:39 Five, four, three...

00:55:42 Okay, I have here a deck of cards, okay?

00:55:45 Okay.

00:55:46 And I'll give this to you.

00:55:47 You can mix them up.

00:55:49 Okay.

00:55:52 And...

00:55:53 And pick a card out?

00:55:54 Pick a card.

00:55:55 Okay.

00:55:56 And take it out, please.

00:55:57 Just...

00:55:58 All right.

00:55:59 Okay.

00:56:00 Now, okay?

00:56:01 I'm not doing anything.

00:56:02 Okay.

00:56:03 I am...

00:56:04 Okay, now put it back.

00:56:05 Okay?

00:56:06 Okay.

00:56:07 Okay.

00:56:11 No fingers.

00:56:12 I don't use tricks like that.

00:56:19 Now...

00:56:24 Okay...

00:56:30 You want to mix it, or I can mix it, or...?

00:56:32 You can mix.

00:56:33 Fine.

00:56:34 We're fine.

00:56:35 I just did.

00:56:36 Okay.

00:56:37 I told him.

00:56:38 Yes.

00:56:40 Okay?

00:56:41 Mm-hmm.

00:56:48 I have to put this...

00:56:49 I take the Joker, and this has to go in.

00:56:53 And we'll see what happens.

00:56:57 This is still...

00:57:01 I'll get this out again.

00:57:06 No.

00:57:14 Oh, yeah.

00:57:17 Those extra cards.

00:57:18 Now...

00:57:28 Okay.

00:57:29 I'm going to show you four cards from the bottom.

00:57:34 And it has to be one of those four cards.

00:57:37 Okay?

00:57:38 Okay.

00:57:39 Was it this one? Six?

00:57:40 Six of clubs.

00:57:41 No, not six of clubs.

00:57:42 Okay.

00:57:46 Six of clubs, this one?

00:57:48 No, that was not the Jack.

00:57:50 Not Jack of Diamonds.

00:57:56 Ace.

00:57:57 No, that was not the Ace.

00:57:59 Okay.

00:58:01 I'll just do it quickly.

00:58:04 Seven of clubs?

00:58:05 No, that was not the Seven of Clubs.

00:58:07 Okay, it's not in here, then.

00:58:09 I'll just do it once more.

00:58:10 This is Seven of Diamonds.

00:58:12 This is Ace or whatever, okay?

00:58:14 Yes, right.

00:58:15 Just tell me the number.

00:58:17 What is it?

00:58:18 It was a King.

00:58:19 King.

00:58:20 Okay.

00:58:21 Okay, don't tell me anything else.

00:58:22 It's not here.

00:58:23 Okay?

00:58:24 Right.

00:58:25 This is a King, King, King, and King.

00:58:29 Don't tell me what it is yet, okay?

00:58:31 Okay.

00:58:32 In one of these.

00:58:34 Now, I'll go.

00:58:36 I'm taking four cards and put it like this.

00:58:41 The King is on the top.

00:58:46 Right.

00:58:47 Okay.

00:58:50 King, King, King, King.

00:58:51 Right.

00:58:52 I'll show you.

00:58:53 It's King.

00:58:54 Right.

00:58:57 Okay?

00:58:58 Right.

00:58:59 Okay?

00:59:00 Right.

00:59:01 Okay.

00:59:03 Now, this is a King, and this is a King, and this is a King.

00:59:08 Okay?

00:59:09 Right.

00:59:10 The same thing.

00:59:16 This is a difficult question.

00:59:19 Okay?

00:59:22 A King.

00:59:23 Right.

00:59:27 Okay, the same old stuff.

00:59:28 Okay?

00:59:31 Right.

00:59:32 Oops.

00:59:34 King.

00:59:35 Right.

00:59:44 Right.

00:59:45 Okay?

00:59:46 The King is not here, of course.

00:59:48 No.

00:59:49 No.

00:59:50 I'm certain the King is there.

00:59:53 I'm going to shuffle this once more.

01:00:02 Well, it's a new trump.

01:00:05 Now, could you pick up from here...

01:00:15 ...a deck?

01:00:17 It doesn't matter.

01:00:19 Any.

01:00:20 Two decks.

01:00:21 Okay.

01:00:22 Okay, okay, okay.

01:00:23 Just...

01:00:24 Just pick up one.

01:00:25 No, no, no.

01:00:26 Just lay your hands.

01:00:27 Okay.

01:00:28 Okay.

01:00:29 No, okay.

01:00:30 So these are...

01:00:31 Okay?

01:00:32 Okay.

01:00:33 We're left with two.

01:00:34 Okay?

01:00:35 Okay.

01:00:36 Now I can take one.

01:00:37 Okay.

01:00:38 Okay.

01:00:39 Now, so it's all elimination.

01:00:40 Okay?

01:00:41 All right.

01:00:42 So...

01:00:45 This one is...

01:00:48 I'm missing one.

01:00:49 You only put three cards on.

01:00:51 Oh, I see.

01:00:52 I should have put four.

01:00:53 Yes.

01:00:54 Anyhow, it's one of these in any case.

01:00:57 Okay?

01:00:58 Mm-hmm.

01:00:59 I don't know what it is now, but let's do it some other way.

01:01:02 It's this one.

01:01:03 Yes.