So thanks very much for your attention and look forward to any questions. Thanks, Lyndon. I thought that was a really great presentation. I was especially struck by the 73 billion a year bigger that we're spending for nuclear war. Okay, we now have still could you please do I don't know if you wanted a PowerPoint but you have the floor. Thanks. I hope you can see my screen now. Yes, we can. And thanks very much for having me. It's a really great pleasure to be back at the is a global nuclear order working group this year, especially in this panel with my my good friends, Lyndon and Benoit. And thanks very much for organizing to the to the conveners and organizers. Thanks very much. I think my presentation today follows on really quite well from what Lyndon just talked about, I guess you could say that I'm talking about one piece of what Lyndon calls the nuclear hotel California namely that last slide he had on Alliance politics and my presentation today is for a paper on extended nuclear deterrence reassessing the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence. And I can only apologize to those of you who may have heard me give this presentation a couple of days ago, virtually in Glasgow. So let me start my presentation and talk about the theoretical premise or rather the theoretical premise assumption that I'm trying to critique or undermine in in my paper, which is the following one it's formulated in many different ways. So I would argue, this is a dominant view in sort of mainstream security studies here is the formulation by famous English historian, Michael Howard, who argued that allied leaders craved American promises of nuclear aggression, not just in the negative role of a deterrent to Soviet aggression, but in the positive role of a reassurance to the West Europeans, the kind of reassurance a child needs from its parents, or an invalid from his doctors against the remote cannot be entirely discounted. I'm going to, for the purposes of this presentation jump over the somewhat problematic language words used in this exact quote, the point I'm making here is that this, this view is quite mainstream and in security studies this exact sentence is cited dozens of times in academic publications in a positive way as a premise and an assumption for any analysis of extended nuclear deterrence. Another formulation of essentially the same theoretical premise is often referred to as the Healy theorem. So if it goes like this, Dennis Healy the former defense minister of the UK said it takes only 5% credibility of American retaliation to deter the Russians but 95% credibility to reassure the Europeans. What, what are we talking about here? Well, I would say that in a nutshell, the theoretical premise here in security studies is that non nuclear allies are highly paranoid and needy, and they worry quite obsessively about the credibility of their patrons extended nuclear deterrence guarantees. And in the absence of credible assurances from from their patron, clients are expected to pursue independent nuclear weapon programs and or to demand credibility building measures such as hardware deployments on their soil by by their patron. And we have very often here a loop where the absence of these, these, these things, demands for increased reassurance is taken as evidence that the extended nuclear deterrent guarantee is, is credible, or in the language of the Healy theorem that it's even more than 95% credible. In my paper I look at this in more detail historically in the context of Norway US relations, so Norway obviously is a member of NATO the founding member back from 1949. And I would argue that Norway, if, if we assume this theory this theoretical premise to be true, then it certainly should apply to, to Norway. So overall, Norway is a country on the periphery of NATO shares a border with Russia traditionally that adversary of, of Norway specifically and NATO, generally. It has a lot of lovable resources. It has a fairly thinly populated territory which back in the late 50s and early 60s was used as an argument in favor of using potentially using tactical nuclear weapons to knock back a possible Russian invasion of of the region bordering Russia. And Norway also has a high technological and economic capacity meaning Norway could produce nuclear weapons if it wanted to. So, as you have already guessed, I'm trying to test this assumption in the Norway US case so the research questions that I'm that I'm asking, this is, I suppose the same question but formulated in a couple of different ways. So how do you extended nuclear deterrence arrangements or often called nuclear umbrellas endure in the face of these seemingly very difficult credibility problems as we remember from the helium theorem. We are supposed to be at the 95 confidence level and upwards in order to avoid what we would expect to see if the credibility of the guarantee eroded. An alternative formulation is quite simply well the helium theorem is correct are non nuclear allies obsessively worried about the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence is this really the case empirically. Before I move on, I would just say that what I'm talking about here are of course sort of formalized nuclear umbrellas. That's what I'm talking about not necessarily general alignment with a nuclear armed states, but what is referred to as nuclear umbrella countries. So, for example, if you look at US allies countries like Thailand and the Philippines are really included in the list of umbrella countries, even though they have alliances with the United States. Anyway, I'm, I'm talking about nuclear umbrellas and credit and their credibility. Before we move on. Again, I'm not asking about the effectiveness of extended nuclear deterrence vis a vis third parties or in this case, Russia, what I'm what I'm talking about and interested in for the purposes of this paper is the relationship between the United States and Norway and how Norwegian and how American foreign policy and security elites assess the credibility of the nuclear umbrella over Norway. So my argument is, again, as you've probably guessed that extended nuclear deterrent arrangements can and do endure even in the absence of credibility. I'm arguing that since essentially the 1950s. Both foreign policy and defense elites on on both sides of the Atlantic, both in Washington and in Oslo have essentially been very skeptical about the credibility of the US pledge to use nuclear weapons in defense of Norway. Again, slightly different to the question of whether a conflict involving Norway might escalate to a nuclear level. You know, it could escalate to a level where American national interests were fully triggered and the United States wanted to use nuclear weapons sort of on its own behalf. So it's a slightly different issue. In my opinion anyway, that is related to the general alignment of non nuclear and the nuclear state and not to these specific or articulated nuclear umbrella arrangements. We don't have time to go into all the details or the empirics about what different leaders have said at different times, suffice it to say that in public of course both Norwegian and American policymakers have in public expressed what you would expect people in what other nuclear hotel California to say they say they say it's credible, but on the back room in private in memos after retirement they say something completely different. It's quite clear also when doing anonymous interviews with with with these elites that the extended nuclear deterrent arrangement is essentially like Santa Claus. It's something everyone pretends to believe in but which everyone sort of agrees doesn't actually exist. But despite the fact that Norwegian policymakers have not seen the US nuclear umbrella as credible, they don't believe that the Americans will fight nuclear war on Norway's behalf. But nevertheless they have issued both an independent nuclear weapon program, and they've rejected credibility building building measures such as use deployments of troops and or nuclear weapons, which is what mainstream security studies would have you believe would be the natural consequences of a loss of credibility of a nuclear umbrella. This has been different, of course, for different members of the NATO Alliance. If you look at Germany, for example, where the pretty much the same thing happened where you had in the 1950s a realization that the Soviet Union's development of nuclear weapons meant that the umbrella was no longer credible. You had the foreign deployment by by the United States of thousands of nuclear weapons deployed, many of them usable so called tactical weapons deployed close to the border with the Warsaw Pact. And if you follow Paul, Paul Bracken's work on command and control, the entire point of this was to create a regional doomsday machine that circumvented US presidential sole authority, and by extension, the entire credibility of nuclear weapons, because you would then no longer rely on an American president, positively authorizing the use of nuclear weapons on behalf of an ally in another hemisphere, you would instead just have built a situation where escalation to the nuclear level would be very very difficult to stop in the first place. Norway fully realized this but opted for a completely different strategy to and try to limit tensions and avoid being targeted altogether. So Norwegian policy makers that have tacitly recognized acknowledged that they were under the nuclear umbrella only in name and not really in practice. However, in public of course they went along with everything and have have as as Lyndon says said everything, at least in public that you would expect people in the nuclear hotel California to say. So then the second part of my paper is to ask the question of why, if this is a charade, why maintain it, why continue to uphold these tropes. I believe there are several interests involved here, several of these incentives that Lyndon talked about. One of them are specific to either the United States or to Norway, but there's one, I think important one that is shared by both American and Norwegian elites, which is the idea that negating or even publicly questioning the credibility of the nuclear level would eliminate what little or marginal minimal credibility there was, and thus negate any, any potential deterrent effect. So if we take the language of the Healy theory again, it may be that these policymakers think there's not a 95% credibility but perhaps a 1% credibility, but they would quite like to have that 1% rather than to have nothing. So let's move on to the American, specifically American interests, I believe there are at least three, and I've sketched them down here so firstly, I think there is a strong interest in trying to share the moral burden of nuclear to counteract emergent norms against nuclear arms. So it's a good thing for the Americans and for the American nuclear complex to be able to say that the nuclear program is being perpetuated not just for the narrow interests of America, but in order to protect allies, and that to sort of avoid being isolated as a norm defiers. Then a second incentive or interest here is that openly acknowledging that one umbrella arrangement lacks credibility. So for example the US Norway umbrella that might undermine the credibility of other umbrella arrangements which are believed to have more value, for example, than the US South Korean nuclear umbrella where perhaps the Americans think that the South Koreans really do believe that the umbrella has value in and of itself. So I think nuclear weapons play an important role as a sort of symbol of power and prestige in alliances, and that they can be used as instruments in intra alliance politics for hegemonic or leadership, if you will ambitions. And the final point is about the Norwegian interests, and I've identified four of them. I think, firstly, loyalty, going along with the nuclear hotel California is seen as a prerequisite for conventional military assistance. Of course what Norwegian policymakers fear is that if they speak out against the nuclear aspects of the alliance, if they withdraw from the nuclear umbrella, then the Americans will simply cancel NATO or at least NATO in relation to Norway. Which is something Lyndon could also talk about I'm sure, which is similar thing to what happened with New Zealand in the mid 1980s where the United States essentially pulled out unilaterally of the ANZUS alliance in retaliation to the New Zealand anti nuclear laws. Then secondly, a second Norwegian interest or incentive to go along with the status quo is that being a good ally is believed to afford access to meetings with Secretary American Secretary of State or Defense or the undersecretary or whatever it's seen as a ticket to political access. Secondly, I think loyalty is also seen to be a prerequisite for institutional and interpersonal status seeking in the transatlantic security community, and this dovetails quite well I think with what Lyndon said earlier that all of the incentive structures work to solidify the status quo. After all, American policymakers and to a large extent scholars are also have significant authority within this transatlantic security community and they are, to a certain extent, they control who gets to climb and the status hierarchy and these kinds of things. And then finally, I think there's been a fair in Norway over the years that disloyalty or speaking out against the nuclear umbrella or against American the American nuclear strategy is fair to have a material cost. For example, in the in the 1950s there was a military assistance program in place, which if had it been canceled by by the Americans would probably have led to a doubling or tripling of the Norwegian defense budget overnight as those lots of cheat and even free military hardware that came with that military assistance program. So I think all of these interests on the Norwegian side incentivize trying to be loyal and ingratiate oneself to the Americans and go along with with what they what they say. So yeah that's what I had planned to say today and if you have any comments or pushbacks, I would be very interested to have and thanks very much. So Santa Claus doesn't exist. Sorry. No, I'm at the Easter Bunny Santa Claus does exist. I can say that with this coming up. Okay. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Ben well. Hello, good afternoon everyone. My name is Ben, I created the nuclear knowledges program at science point Paris. I feel among friends and family here. A long time ago I was much more directly involved with the visa article or working group in my presentation this year will be very different from anything I've ever presented today. It's going to be. It's essentially a call for advice that you could also call call for help. A very specific one. It's because I have just published in French, a really really large paper on popular culture in nuclear politics and when I say really really large I mean 25,000 words. So essentially the question I have is, I will tell you what I think the contributions of the paper are in what the empirics are. So I'm curious about from your standpoint, which bits of it would be most important or most relevant. I don't want to proceed towards writing an English version of it, because arguably I'll have to either make choices or expend and go all the way to book for. So this is this is where your help is going to be super helpful. So the starting point of this is a fundamental challenge, which is the disbelief that we all citizens living in a nuclear armed world have in the possibility of nuclear disaster. This was originally articulated by German philosopher contra unders as the Prometheus discrepancy. And maybe most recently by Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Rhodes, when he said wrote in 2014 you know, no one in the corridors of power believes that the damn things can go off. So a fundamental disbelief in the possibility of unwanted nuclear catastrophe. And I mean, one empirical contribution of this paper is that I interviewed policymakers, books, supporters of the term nuclear deterrence and opponents of nuclear deterrence, activists, artists, and all of them can have shared candidly. How challenging how difficult it is to believe what we know, which is to believe that it remains possible that nuclear war happens. So, in the face of that, I'm essentially making a series of conceptual aesthetic and historical arguments that I'm going to just briefly lay out for you. The conceptual ones simply have to do with the fact that imagination, and in that respect, imagining the possibility of nuclear war should be treated as constitutive of political agency. More specifically, the second argument is that a crucial role should be given to fiction, and in particular to popular visual culture in overcoming our disbelief in the possibility of nuclear disaster. So fiction would be a tool to make us believe what we know. And if this is correct, then the third argument is that there is one underexplored effect of the so-called nuclear revolution, which is to elevate the role of fiction as an irreplaceable source of political awareness in a world of nuclear vulnerability. So those are the three conceptual arguments. Now, on the aesthetic front, there are three arguments also. First, I'm articulating, and I will tell you what those gestures are. I'm articulating four aesthetic gestures which allow the viewer an experience of the possibility of nuclear war, and we essentially document through survey that this experience has an effect on the viewer. I'll tell you what the four aesthetic gestures are, but just identifying them as a first argument. The second argument is that there is a trope, frequent trope that mostly scholars of gender studies will be familiar with, the trope of the warrior-hero-protector. It suffices to ensure that the representation of the possibility of nuclear war will fail. And surprisingly, I find this failure in movies that are very, very different from each other, which both challenge the expectations of the viewer in several ways. Le Champ du Lou in France in 2019 and the Mission Impossible franchise in the US. And every single time both of those touch upon the possibility of nuclear war, this possibility kind of gets derailed by the fact that it's literally incompatible with the trope of the warrior-hero-protector. That would just become a very, very revengeful individual. The third aesthetic argument, and that's the one I'm most interested in, is that in archival documentation about Reagan in the survey, in interviews with Ambassador Alexander Quent, we found evidence, of course more needs to be done, but we found evidence that in order for fiction to have an impact, it's much more likely if it denies cathartic relief at the end of the spectacle. What I mean by that is threads in the day after deny cathartic relief. They leave you in an agonizing situation in which it's much easier, it's much harder to close the door between the experience of the viewing and your normal life. Movies that are arguably better movies by much more famous directors such as Dr. Strangelove or Wargames allow you cathartic relief either through the spectacle of the end of the world, the end of Strangelove, or by the spectacle that you know you've avoided it. And there is a catharticist of global reconciliation in the name of our common survival. But in the survey, as well as for Reagan and for Ambassador Quent, turns out that the movies that actually had an impact are not Strangelove, they're not the fancy ones. They're the ones that leave you in agony threads in the day after. Then there are two historical arguments that I'm trying to make with this paper. One is simply a history of political culture because it's an empirically heavy paper which surveys as much as I could see and review of the representation of nuclear weapons and popular culture visually from 1950 to 2019. And in it, there is an interesting divide, clear divide between all the decades pre-1990 and all the decades post-1990. In all the decades pre-1990, the four gestures that I identified that allow us to experience the possibility of nuclear war, they are frequently displayed. After 1990, they are not displayed at all with two exceptions. Their reference object shifts from nuclear war to climate-related or environmental disasters, pandemics, or asteroids threatening to hit the earth. So this kind of divide between the entire pre-1990 culture and the post-1990 culture that I can specify if you're interested in is the first historical argument. The second historical argument is just an imaginable or a cultural underpinning of an argument that Schultz has made in his International Affairs article on the idea that the 1990s has been mischaracterized at the Golden Age of Nuclear Autosarmament, but instead that it was an age of perpetualization of nuclear weapons. So this is just adding a layer, a cultural layer that made this possible because we essentially lost the experience of the possibility of nuclear war. So those are the two historical arguments that I wanted to make. If you want to ask me to expand, those are the two ways in which I could expand, and so I'm curious also about whether you think that those are worthwhile avenues. The first one is at Reese's workshop, I've discovered that there is a BBC TV show called Vigil, which I wasn't aware of because it was made in 2021. So I'd be interested in extending the Mission Impossible, Le Chant du Lou analysis, which shows similar tropes of the hero warrior protector and see whether they extend to Vigil as well, regardless of so-called national strategic culture. And one additional thing that I could explore is essentially how awareness of the possibility of nuclear disaster manifests itself. And there is a really interesting paper in Social Problems published in 2020 by Bergstrand and Robertson, which is based on interviews of people who experienced the 2018 Hawaii missile scam. And what this paper shows is that what distinguishes those who get engaged from those who don't engage meaning engaged in nuclear weapons, politics, as opposed to those who don't, is whether they experience not fear, as we would have expected, but sadness. And so that's something that I could also kind of expend upon. So as I said, I mean, it's also an empirically very rich paper, which has a series of interviews to survey in an analysis of global popular culture of the last 70 years. So there is a case to be made also, if you think so, that just focusing on the empirics would be a good way to go. So if I have two more minutes, I can tell you what the four aesthetic gestures are, and otherwise I can stop here. You have two minutes. Excellent. Okay, so those four gestures are for the first one is the obvious is showing the beginning of nuclear war, right. We've seen Dr. Strangerov we see the beginning of nuclear war. We've seen failsafe. We see the beginning of the nuclear war. We've seen the day after we've seen Akira. All of this shows the beginning of nuclear war, but this is not by far, the only aesthetic gesture you can make to make this experience a livable. The second one is that you create the sense that nuclear war is possible, because it happens in the narration of it happens before it is forgotten, but we do not get to see its beginning. And in that respect, Malville, which is originally a novel, but then a movie by Christian the challenge in 1981 is an example in which you don't see the beginning of nuclear war, people are underground in a basement, and what you hear as a big shock. And then the question is do they go out and what happens to those who go out. The only thing you see is that the light goes off threads is also an example of that we don't see the beginning. And the third gesture is the past making the possibility of nuclear war as inevitability through what Angeliber has called Latente apocalyptic. So I can't translate that into English but it's essentially shifting the value of time by saying by essentially conveying the message to the viewer that nuclear war has started. It's coming in the experience of viewing is just waiting until the moment when it hits you but you know it will. There's no puzzle of whether it will or will not hit you. And so the obvious example of that is on the beach. But more recently, a threat or the sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky, or even miracle mile in 1989. The third gesture force gesture being problematizing complacency vis-à-vis the possibility of nuclear war. My obvious favorite in that genre is Akira Kurosawa's I live in fear, which essentially is problematizing what's being crazy. Is it being fearless in the face of nuclear vulnerability, or is it being terrified to the point that you want to move your family to Brazil, because you think they will be safe there. Another example of that genre would be Hiroshima Mon Amour, when they essentially show the love making as an experience of essentially encountering Ash. Another interesting I think was those four gestures is that contrary to what one could be afraid of. They don't all require to display an insane amount of nuclear violence, only the first one does. I could essentially expand on those gestures. The final comment I'll make on the aesthetic gestures is that in the post 1990 world, I've even seen signs that the genre is playing with the knowledge that of course the viewer knows that this won't happen. So it explicitly plays with the fact that we all know it's theater and we're just trying to scare each other just for fun. You know, there is a Jack Black show from 2014 directed by J. Roche that plays exactly on that rope. So those are the avenues I could pursue. Tell me if any of that is interesting, if none of it is, then I'll go on holiday. Thank you. Thanks Benoit. Don't go on holiday. I mean, have a break, but don't. Okay, I'm going to abuse my position because I just can't help it because the three presentations were absolutely fantastic. I'm going to try and be as quick as possible about it if I can't get all my comments in questions is I'm going to email you all but I thought you all did a brilliant job. So if I'll start with Lyndon.  Firstly, is the Hotel California device that you use is that I mean a lot of your examples are US centric. Right. And so I guess what I would like to see is you to push out side of the US examples as many as there are and of course there's so many. But I'd kind of like to see it outside of US US context right I think it would help to make. I mean I believe you face right I think it's very convincing, but I want to be convinced even more beyond the US case so if you can, if you can do that that I think would make the case even more even stronger. And then my second question is sort of a more important question really, which is what is it going to take, because you know it seems to me you know how many bed bugs you're going to get into the hotel to get the residents out. Because you do a great job at sort of showing you know why these people stay in the hotel and incentives so high and everything but how do you how do you get to reverse that security claim I think. Benoit gives a little bit of an answer in his, in his talk right through the use of fiction and popular culture. But I guess I'd like to sort of see your reaction to that. So I mean, I don't know much about the Norwegian case so I can't, I can't speak to speak to that I my, my limited knowledge is obviously around the Asian cases. I'm still getting past the whole standard doesn't exist but I guess I've got, I've got three, three broad questions the first is I was really taken with your moral burden point.  You know, it, the United States is the only country that has used me for weapons in war. And no other country can quite make that claim there are certain certainly there are countries that have tested these weapons and cause huge damage and even loss of life right. So there are testers and there are actual countries that have used these weapons, i.e the United States in war. So, again, this is a bit similar to my first question for Lyndon. Is this a particular US problem. Right, so if, so if China is offering a nuclear umbrella it's not but let's say it's offering a nuclear umbrella or, or Russia is offering a nuclear umbrella. Do they, do they not have the same level of moral burden that's where I'm going. My question is, I know, I think it's a bit unfair my question, but I know you say you're not interested in third parties here but they're somewhat interlinked right I mean umbrellas are also a force projection they're a projector. I mean it's not simply the case that they exist in a bilateral vacuum. It's the case of US Japan. You know, it's clearly that the US Japan nuclear umbrella is not just about reassuring Japan, it's also about deterring of course North Korea it's about deterring China and it's about having the ability to have capabilities not just nuclear as part of that nuclear umbrella is usually exist coexist alongside many other military and defence arrangements they don't exist on their own. They might even be a very small part of the broader arrangements so just aggregating them is quite hard. I think a question for both you and for Lyndon and maybe even Benoit is a question about time. So I was thinking constantly throughout all your presentations. Doesn't time matter. I mean, the longer something carries on the longer we have the status quo, the longer you don't do something the harder it gets to change. Right. I mean at least this is what I'm this is what I'm thinking right now that you get stuck in a rut. Right. So this question of time how do you combat time right that kept that was nagging me at the back of my head when I was listening to all three questions. And then I'll be very quick. I see it quite I see your paper in two parts the way you presented it but I'd have to read it I really see the fiction and the last section that you talked about as one and then the middle bit around sort of, you know these these other political historical I see that somewhat separate but I'd have to read it to make that claim but but it felt like that when you are listening to it. And I loved this idea and your background works very well for it about this relation between the fiction and popular culture and have it being a tool right. But I still I still, I probably have to read it I don't know my friend just enough to read it in French but how do you actually get that out there like if you believe what Lyndon says that you know the money is out there if you're you know it's supportive of deterrence but if you're you know you're not going to get my how you're going to get published how you're going to get on the headlines of time magazine how you're going to do all that stuff. In terms of you know fiction and popular culture, when, if you, you know, as Lyndon says, in the material sense, the world is out there to get you it doesn't help you doesn't enable you in that in that context right how you're going to get the publishes and so forth in the axis. And then suddenly how you can get people to experience it I mean I've often found my even myself if I hear of something that's happening, or you can experience a virtual refugee come or you can experience all the, there is part of me that almost doesn't want to do it. Right.   How'd you get over that I'm still not sure. Like I've heard how you would right and I think it would be very useful with myself. Okay, and last thing, Benoit is I kept thinking about, you know, fear is totally the wrong emotion. And when we're talking about me for weapons, you know, and sadness like you said, maybe a sense of self of protecting yourself. It's not fear is different by protecting yourself is somewhat different from fear. And when we're talking about fear what type of fear is it a fear of death, a type of death. You know, I kept thinking that when you're talking about fiction and movies and horror movies. And I mean they play on this fear of death, which we always sort of put at the back of our minds, that's how we live. We don't think about death every day if we did, unless you're a philosopher on that particular area will be very hard to live like that all the time. I kept thinking about, you know, if we think about fear what type of fear is it really fear of death and if it's not, and if fear is the wrong emotion then what is the best emotion is it is it is it sadness perhaps. Okay, last comment because I know I've dominated already but I hate the the term that's very popular it's been popular since the 80s you know nuclear war can never be one must never be four. It seems to me hugely problematic in the context of the three presentations you've all just made. In the sense that, in a way there is a there is a, you know, in a way it's saying that it's underpinning the very problem that you will say that there is a belief that war can actually be fought that's why we have to save it right that's why we have to promote this slogan, I'll just read it but that's how I was read it that it's actually reinforces this view that there is a belief and that's why we have to keep saying it so so make ourselves different.  I'm very happy to all to come back with me now if you have immediate reactions or I can immediately go to the floor so it's up to you if you want to come back to me on any of those things. Yes, I'm muted but I can't hear you. Yeah, I just thought I just thought we're going to go in the order of the presentations. So I expected yes we can definitely. If you want to react to that I know you did. Thank you. Really fantastic. No, no, all good. There's a lot there so I'll try and go quickly so Reagan Gorbachev it was not true then and it's not true now. The military establishment hated Reagan saying it that everything they could to try and stop him saying it and he said it because he wasn't a military strategist. He was an actor, and he didn't know the script, and he went off script, and they didn't like it so the reality is, it's a nuclear war fighting machine it's designed for fighting nuclear war and if you say oh yes but we don't actually intend to fight a nuclear war because that undermines the deterrent effect and you're not allowed to say that. So you can't take, there's no moral out by going oh yeah but we're never actually going to fight a nuclear war I'm like that that's not a moral out that undermines the whole basis of spending, you know trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. So you have to make the claim you have to commit to the moral position that you are going to fight a nuclear war so Reagan Gorbachev wasn't true then not true now. So this program is the exception that proves my rule about funding. So actually Benoit will very proudly and rightly so tell you that he takes no money from anyone that has a set position or normative perspective on these issues at all. That's amazing. He says it's the only such program in France. I'm not aware of any anywhere in the world, there may be maybe there are and I don't know but but like. I would say that the vast amount of money that's used to do research in this field comes from even nuclear weapons possessing states or institutions that generally support the maintenance of nuclear weapons but anyway I'd argue that nuclear knowledge is the exception the proof is the rule is the hotel California effect international, more examples outside the US. It's a really good point. As usual I pick on the US because the US is most transparent so they get it in the neck so sorry about that. As I said basically, these are ideas that have kicked around in my research but I've never taken the time and effort to actually write them up because to be honest like I'm not going to make a lot of friends with this presentation right so it's not something that I have been incentivized to do right because this presentation is not going to get me funding from the FCDO is just not right. So, I need to look into that question more I can give you a ton of questions from US L sorry I tell them examples from US allies, but I haven't looked in detail at other contexts but you know I do know that in a Russian context like saying the words nuclear disarmament is not great for your for your career. I've, I've talked to Russian officials I've talked to Russian academics and think tank is now like you know you don't, you don't say those words in Russia right because it's not good for your career. If the hotel California is true what do we do about it. So my answer is lit 1000 flowers bloom. Not that I think now is a great person to be quoting but what is. First of all, the only way out of the hotel is just to get up and walk out. The only way out is to say I do not believe that nuclear weapons are a net security benefit. And if you're willing to say that then a lot of the other problems drop away the political problems and the money problems don't drop away but like the psychological problems drop away and then you're empowered to actually speak your truth. So much more to go on to the idea for for for time I won't on Ben was fantastic point about fear not being a trigger to engagement and nuclear policy but sadness and coming to your question. I would like to see a full video real interactive real time experience of a nuclear blast in an urban environment and I would like to see policymakers who claim that they are willing to support a nuclear war for example, in NATO and other US allies and I would like to see those policymakers required to go through the experience of a video real video real virtual reality nuclear blast in an urban center. Before they make that claim. And I would also like to see people that go through war games and choose to use nuclear weapons as a part of war gaming required to do the same thing because I think it would make it much more real for them what they're actually claiming to be willing to do. And then they might rethink that willingness when it actually comes time to take the job that would require them to make that decision for example or say the words in public that they're required to say in public. What do we do about it my big picture is actually so I've just written a whole article on a global nuclear verification system built on a carbon negative blockchain and incentivize through the issuance of verification coin cryptocurrency. Based on elite social and automated verification to include open source verification and I think the way that you do it is to quote Buckminster fuller. You never change things by fighting the existing reality to change something build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. So if the current reason that we can't disarm is because all of the incentives are to maintain the status quo, then we need to build a global societal system in which it's a profitable business. You need to be able to make money and build political careers and build social movements and build cooperative societies in which you can put food on your family's table by verifying the absence of nuclear threats. And if we can build a system where you can put food on your family's table by actively contributing to the verification of the absence of nuclear threats, then I think we've created a world in which it's possible to imagine. And I'm going to go to California. I'm going to leave it there because I've spoken a lot as well but yeah. Thanks so much. Thank you for your really excellent questions so firstly on this point about the moral burden. I should clarify what I what I mean by that is essentially political pressure for disarmament. I think for countries that face obstacles in or have a hard time justifying retaining nuclear weapons and embarking on nuclear modernization programs. It's, it's a strong rhetorical assets to be able to say we are not doing this just for ourselves but we are doing this because our allies are asking for it essentially. And that trope or that rhetoric was very prevalent when, when the UK Parliament authorized tried renewal in 2015 under Theresa May. So it's definitely not limited to the United States and I think it's also increasingly the case with France, where I think French elites and Benoit and I have written a paper about this called European nuclear weapons, the question mark. And I think a French French elites have have realized increasingly that they've missed a trick by being on the outside of the NATO nuclear planning group, because they don't have the same access to those kinds of arguments that the Brits and the Americans have. And that's also that also partly explains this, this French push for Europeanization of the French nuclear arsenal. So this goes back to the 50s with with France proposing some kind of European concerted deterrent arrangement, as they call it. As, as answering to some, some of those same sort of pressures and impulse to, as I've called it a lesson the moral burden, I could equally call it trying to deflect or pulverize political pressure. And that's essentially what I'm, what I'm, what I'm getting at as being one of the benefits of a nuclear umbrella from the perspective of the security patron. And with other states as well Russia and China, I don't know enough about the internal politics there but my general sense would just be that they have due to their domestic political systems, less of a needs to justify their modernization programs in that way, because they're authoritarian states. It's easier for them to just make decisions. And there's, there's probably less pressure from civil society groups of course I, I think this argument that there is no pressure and that there's no domestic politics in nuclear weapon states is absolutely wrong. I think they also authoritarian states also can be influenced through norms, but I think probably on this point there is my mind just my sense would be that there is a slight difference there. They're just very quickly about them, about third parties and that I'm in this paper not really saying anything about whether or not deterrence work quotation marks. That's just because the sort of precise research question that I'm trying to get at is why, if Norway didn't find the extended deterrent credible. Did it not seek reassurance essentially. So, of course, the deterrent effect is relevant to that question in so far as Norwegian elites had ideas about the deterrent effect vis-à-vis the Russians. What I'm arguing is that very influential high level Norwegian policymakers from the 90s till today don't really think nuclear weapons are particularly relevant in defending a Russian incursion in, you know, the barren sea against Norwegian oil installations or anything like that. Yeah, the final question about time I think I'll just take that as a comment rather than I don't think I'll be able to properly answer that I mean I agree. The longer something goes on, the more difficult is to upend it I think so yeah I agree with that. Benoit, I'm just before you answer. I'm going to add five minutes on this panel because if that's okay with you all just because we have three hands up in the air after your comments Benoit and I did talk a lot at the beginning so Benoit please. Okay, so then I'll be brief, but I want to express gratitude I mean though your engagement with the paper is fabulous. So I'll take it in two parts. One is the, how does that operate in Linden's world in which material constraints are defining. And the other one is an implementation, sorry, an implementation problem of a cultural proposition. So, I don't think it's incompatible at all with Linden's proposition because some policymakers and some advocates act in a world that has been constituted by those material interests, but they don't actively feel that you know their lobbyists possess, no, no they feel that they are totally neutral.  The hope is that they would be willing to take in new information and the hope is essentially policy making elites. If you tell them like look, your advisors have given you an incomplete lecture. It's a more complete one. It's free and we're available to you. At least some of them will not shut the door and will exercise independent judgment as to their impact I mean I think there is clear evidence you know, Reagan was shaken by the day after I mean arguably because the character was his old friend Jason Robards, who ends up kind of dying in a kind of in a reversed version of the cowboy they both were once were. And so Reagan came down and told the people who were advocating limited nuclear war that they were crazy after watching the day after so we have kind of some evidence of impact. And ultimately, I think, in terms of impact, we have an impact on the broader public. And here I'm relying on a great book by William Nobleau called them nuclear freeze in a cold war, in which he shows that the birth of the freeze which I would treat as a force that actually changed US nuclear policy both in terms of leading to the INF and also leading to kind of arms reduction. In general, the birth of the freeze movement is a combination of the concept of nuclear winter Carl Sagan. Jonathan shells, the fate of the earth that we now have evidence that the Reagan administration tried to contain but failed in the day after. So you put those three in the mix at the same time, and you get the freeze movement. To me that sounds that that counts as not insignificant. And how I would, I would make this claim compatible with Lyndon's world in saying those interest in the 80s. I don't think they were more powerful than they are now mean they were very powerful then they are very powerful now, were they more or less I don't really know. I think there's a lot of implementation now which is your, you're absolutely right like none of us wants wants to go through the cultural experience of like total dread. But, yeah, I think, I think there are two dimensions to this. One is, there is still the appeal of horror films. So there are some negative emotions that somehow are appealing that we could connect with, or mobilize in the other thing in general, I mean, two more points one and one is the virtual reality experience and what Sharon Weiner and Mortz could are doing now prove I mean promises to be very helpful for leaders in helping them realize what this is. But the problem is, we can no longer do the day after in terms of, we can't have 100 million households watching the same TV program. The problem we're facing is fragmentation in the fact that our audiences are so much more separate from each other. Yeah, I guess, I guess that the final point I would make is that there is a flip side of this argument which is the final section that I didn't mention. That would also responsabilize the people who are producing cultural content because you would show them that since 1990, they've essentially not just normalized nuclear weapons but they've turned them into weapons that can only cause minimal harm that are sometimes the weapons of salvation, even sometimes by reversing this, they were supposed to to show you the harm they could cause I mean I'm thinking mostly about the Godzilla narrative where originally Godzilla is the epitome of the outcome of the war.  So those are kind of three quick responses but thank you again. Wonderful, thank you all. I've got three hands. I saw Paul first, then I saw Janine sorry if I pronounced that name wrong and then so. So if you, I know that I wasn't concise and I wasn't quick but if you could be concise and quick it's super appreciated thank you. I'll try and be concise. On the Norwegian case, I mean the problem with you knowing people in Norway who don't think this is credible as I know people who think that it was or is. We, you know, we could produce them as it's hard to know who's who's right. There's also the question of solidarity, NATO solidarity which is a thing that some people believed in. If we had somebody from the Baltic states or Poland here, they might not think that Poland decide that Norway deciding to go its own skeptical nuclear is good for NATO or Europe. And there's also the question of what nuclear weapons do countervailing Russian nuclear blackmail, if they threaten to escalate if NATO gets lucky in conventional war that that's a function of that nuclear weapons without maybe having to explode at all, you know, preventing easy Russian escalation dominant. And finally, I think the phrase that ought to come up is the one that Brad Roberts uses that Russia that America is reluctant to be NATO's convenient nuclear that it wants to see, rather than the spiritually advanced Europeans distancing themselves from thermonuclear war it wants to see some involvement, because it American leaders are not necessarily confident that the American public will do it alone. If if others who are supposed to be being defended say no. There's a whole, there's a whole set of points there on for Lyndon. I like your hotel California thing but maybe it's the wrong place. What about the hotel Sao Paulo, because California has the idea if you make the jailbreak, the space out there where everybody can live happily together. But in the Brazilian jail there are no warders who are going to stop brutal behavior there's nowhere to get out and once you leave your cell, your nuclear cell, you're exposed to the exploitative violence of others, including very, very violent others. So, you know, your knowledge is interesting but you maybe maybe want to consider how it how it varies with the conditions of the penitentiary and the hotel California is not necessarily the right the right one. And I also want to say, and I shall say this tomorrow, but it seems to me, we are generally talking about why we disagree. How is it possible that highly intelligent people with a great deal of information disagree. And I think there are subcultural and psychological reasons which we're reluctant and often don't have time enough to talk about. And which are which are not go, you know, which are maybe as strong in some cases as loads of money. So Ambassador Kim Ant was mentioned. There's someone who's absolutely made his career. There are plenty others who have made their career within the disarmament archipelago, espousing an abolitionist position there are others, there are scholars. But I suspect in the Academy, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a nuclear skeptic, there are careers to be made. I think we can see them. And that's that so that has an interesting divergence in the sort of people who talk about this are not not thinking in the same ways with the same incentives as those you make the decisions. So some of the things they have to say are just not going to fit about what what what is happening. I'll talk further tomorrow. And finally, Ben, why I like I loved your idea. Yeah, let's use fiction. I loved your idea of the book. Looking at that there is in fact a book looking at nuclear war films which I which I'll send you in case you details in case you haven't seen it. But we ought to be thinking of the fictions of different paths to war. There are, there's a whole genre which points out how nuclear war can begin. And often that's through measures you wouldn't want to take. Determination deterrents etc. And when that fails, then you drift into war. There's a book by Linda French on future war in Europe, which came out this year which is, which is exactly that and there have been. So John Hackett's thing. So there's all this whole genre, and it seems to me you'd need to, you would need to explore the plausibility of different scenarios, arguing different things. Books are written to to lead the reader and films are made to make the audience believe different things about the nuclear risks and where it comes from an hms vigil by the way it's absolutely terrible. And that there's an example of a filmic creation, which is so obviously fixed towards a certain conclusion that it's very difficult for those who are not already persuaded to watch it without switch switching off. So here we're into the question of what what balance would be. We don't escape that question of what we think is a fair representation of nuclear risk by saying let's look at fiction, we're going to disagree about what we think of the various fictions, according to the sub cultural and personality presuppositions that we bring to the whole subject. Okay, thanks, Paul. And is it joining. He's really. Thank you. So for London, actually, all three presentations were excellent. Thank you so much. But for London. First question is just thinking how you get out of the hotel California I think that the moral movements of the day is quite powerful I mean slave traders were in this hotel too. Like, in South Africa the, the apartheid machinery people who worked in that bring the hotel California to, and they get out of it and I think you absolutely right the first step is just to say, you know, the emperor doesn't have any coats on. The second point is is also it's similar to what Paul said that careers are being made in on the anti nuclear side of things or arms control side of things. In fact, I want to pose a question to you whether nuclear weapons are not necessary. Some of us in this arms control. I can business, not occupying the budget rooms in the hotel California maybe not the top streets. So, you know, I in South Africa where we gave up nuclear weapons with the country gave up nuclear weapons. I can tell you it's very hard for somebody like me interested in it to get funding and to, to really get anything together, a critical mass to pursue a career in, in this field. And then just for meanwhile. So I know you asked us to say certain things about your paper. And I don't think you want us to add new things but I do want to say, I think for children, popular culture starts with cartoons. And I remember by chance, seeing this little cartoon made from Dr. Zeus is the butter battle. The son of that point three was watching it with me. You know, that's where it started. So you may want to look at that as a genre as well. I know my son today is of six feet is a vegetarian because of phones. The happy feet was especially one that swayed him of not eating meat anymore. Something on the emotion that you feel, I think, empathy is especially an emotion that's triggered by popular culture. I remember showing this, it was a documentary on nuclear weapons and the day after Hiroshima, that kind of thing. And one of the about Kusha was talking about she was narrating how she saw a woman trying to breastfeed after the bomb had exploded and this baby was crying. And, you know, I showed it several years in a row, and it was only when I was breastfeeding myself, and I saw that I got so emotional in class, I was literally in tears. And it was so for me, that's kind of the empathy thing that I wanted to bring to the emotion that can be triggered. And yeah, so just those two points. Thanks, Trini. And the last is for so please be quick as quick as you can be. Sure. Yeah. So thanks to all three presenters. My, my question is directed to the second presenter on US Norwegian Alliance. Partially, and I got two comments slash questions, and it's partially because I'm working on a similar topic as well. I wonder how much, how much the US Norwegian Alliance case can travel across, partially because we all know that the United States implemented different strategies in Asia and Europe for for one. And this forthcoming piece in security studies titled strategies of extended deterrence. I just checked it's not available online. He actually wrote like 120 page appendix. So going through all different types of extended deterrence cases. So I thought that might be very helpful as well. And I think I think this talks to like the different strategies or different types of extended deterrence. You can actually see. And it's not, it's not the same. It's not a one size fit all within this concept. The second I think related part would be how much of the lines politics context you actually use, because I think, you know, Glenn Schneider's work can actually come in really, really handy and that's how my co-author and I are actually approaching this because if there are different strategies of extended deterrence and an actual extended deterrence scenario would have even flows and there's variations within them that might actually matter to the endurance part of your research in terms of theorizing as well as contextualizing as well. Those are my two points. Hope that was short enough. Yeah, that was very good. Thank you. Now, obviously, you don't have time as plan list to answer all those questions. So, Lyndon Shroff and Benoit, I'll give you the opportunity to reply to any of that. Please don't try to reply to all of it.  So, Lyndon, any thoughts or comments briefly. Glenn, thank you. Lots of thoughts, lots of comments. I'll limit them to a couple. Paul, if you can show me a song called Hotel Sao Paulo that is one of the most famous universally known songs on the planet, I will happily change the title of my piece. But until such time, I'm going with Hotel California. And in general comment that it kind of speaks to a lot of the different stuff that's come out. I want to be really clear and say I'm not taking a material approach to the problem of nuclear disarmament. I wrote a whole PhD, you know, on identity and its relationship to policy right so I'm all about that security is socially constructed identities and norms are socially constructed etc. In that regard, it is let a thousand flowers bloom. The whole movement to redefine the concept of security to redefine the concept, you know, towards humanitarian ideas R2P planetary security more recently in the Anthropocene age right there's a whole movement now around, you know, planet politics and planetary security. All of these things are really important in changing the nature of the debate around the utility or otherwise of nuclear weapons and all of those will continue to contribute to debates around whether people see nuclear weapons to be a quote net security benefit, because we changed the definition of security it should change is what you perceive to be useful. As for people making their career and disarmament look. I don't have figures to give you but I tell you what I spent 17 years writing a lot of papers with the words nuclear assignment and title. And it has not been a profitable business so that's just my personal experience, but I would wager if I were a betting man, I would wager good money that the number of people making a useful career and having social status, and having access to the most powerful policymakers in the world, who made their career on nuclear disarmament is miniscule and can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, compared to over eight decades the number of people who made, you know, and I'm talking, you know, wildly off the top of my head I would say tens of thousands of people have made a career selling the idea that nuclear weapons are good for security, and in the process, got social status recognition and access to the most powerful policymakers in the world so I think there's just no comparison in my personal perspective. And I think that comes back to talk not just about economics and material factors but like power and who has power and who allows access to power etc and the whole system we live in allows you that access to power if you support me to weapons and it does not allow that access to power if you don't support you to weapons as a generalization obviously. Thanks London. Thanks very much I'll try to be really brief. Paul thanks very much for your comments solidarity is a very good point and is another reason to go along with extended nuclear deterrence in the absence of credibility. So, I should definitely add that to the presentation and to the paper, more explicitly than I do now. And then on the on the second point that that you've talked to Norwegians who say they think it's credible. I mean that's sort of perfectly line with my argument what I'm, what I'm attacking is this 95% confidence threshold. So anything below 95% is, I would argue, fits my, my theory. Also, I would, I would say that if my theory is is correct, then, and I don't know what conversations with Norwegian policymakers or elites, you're referring to but I would say that if my theory is correct then then certainly active. The Norwegian policy elites, non retired ones would have when speaking to you someone they probably would see as a broadly speaking representative of the defense establishment of a nuclear armed states and a senior member of the Alliance, they would as representatives of a junior member of the Alliance, probably perceive a incentive or an impetus to go along with what they think you want to hear. That's a perhaps a cheeky comment. And then, so thanks very much for your suggestions I think I'm going to have to look more into what you mentioned the paper on extended deterrence strategies also Snyder that is a part of my paper. And then on just super quickly on how well the Norwegian case travels I think empirically maybe not very well, but I would say, theoretically, it does in the sense that if you take the theory, the theories the mainstream view at face value Norway should be a state that would be very interested in sort of nuclear defense and a strong extended deterrence guarantee. And the puzzle that I'm trying to say something about is why, given that so many maybe not all, but so many Norwegian defense elites didn't think it was credible. They just accepted that it wasn't credible and just, and didn't ask for insurance measures. So yeah, thanks very much for all the comments. Super helpful. Thanks. Thank comment taken on looking at the children absolutely it's like, it's going to be a lot of work because this is a this is a you know the area I know nothing about, but you know, totally valid comment. Paul, this is, we need to have a conversation about this because about essentially the scope of what I'm what I'm looking at isn't essentially the scope as it is now is to say, it's a fact that everyone accepts that nuclear war is possible desired or not. And we have, as you said, psychological reasons, rationalist reasons, ideological reasons to act as if that's not the case. And that's kind of documented by a lot of people before me, I'm thinking about, you know, Hugh Gustafson on the people in the lab. Psychologist Danny kind of man on the, on all the forms of illusions of control. And so my, my very modest point at the end is just one step forward would be to get policymakers and citizens aware of this possibility that they are essentially a hard wire to negate. And the reason why I think that's important is that if they go to the expert advisors who are well versed in the art of nuclear deterrence discourse, of course they have to make the performative claim that the whole operation works. So essentially they will not get the narrative that they are remaining vulnerability so the goal I'm having is just fix that. And the question I have for you is, when you said I should look at different scenarios. Do you think that there are other scenarios about how war starts that are as hard to believe as the ones I've just outlined because my assumption and maybe I'm wrong on that one. The question is that it's easier to accept that it's possible for conventional wars to start and we can think of various ways in which they could start. The reason why I focused on this because I thought that reality was much harder to accept, but you know be happy to hear what you think about that. Yeah, we should speak but maybe not now, although I'd be happy. Wonderful. Yes, thank you very much both of you we are wildly over time but it's okay we've gone into the break. And what I suggest is that we still take 10 minutes because I don't know about you but I need 10 minutes. And that's only because I need 10 minutes because it was an incredibly stimulating panel so thank you to all the panelists. We will come back in 10 minutes or so. We will not be recording the next session. And so take notes if you want to remember what you said.


So you want to make some changes. Maybe you want to study better. Maybe you want to be more productive. But today's video guys I'm going to show you how to do all of that without feeling like you're going in circles. Alright guys what is going on? Lex here from The New Journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. Now today is another episode in the motivational Monday series where I'm all about helping you enjoy your Mondays as much as your Fridays. And today's video guys is about the concept of dials over switches. And to explain the concept let me give you a quick scenario. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You're a new student you know first week, first month of med school and you scour the internet trying to find the best thing, the new best study strategy. And you give it a shot. You feel good about yourself. You're like this is going to be the one. And you spend a week week studying. You take the quiz, the exam, get the results back. Boom. You did worse. And not only did you do worse now you feel incompetent.  You don't feel like you belong in med school. And it's not of the study strategy or you who as at fault instead it's how quickly you made the adjustments and what adjustments you made. You flip the switch. Flipping the switch is where you make a complete 180 turn on everything you're trying to make improvements on. Instead guys you need to turn the dial. Now let's explain this through our studying example. Now studying isn't one thing it's broken it's actually multiple components right. There is a part where you take your nose there's a part where you read and then the last two is where you review and you master and learn the material long term. So those last two are things like flashcards and outlines things like practice questions review slides but instead of getting rid of all of that at one time you really just need to make small changes. So that's what this video is about guys. It's about turning the dial and not turning the switch. So here is a step by step way how to make sure you're doing dials over switches. So the first thing is identifying what you want to change. For example you can say I want to be better at studying but that doesn't really say very much. It just says I want to be a better person. That's not very capable goal. You need to instead identify something in your studying you feel it could be improved. Maybe you can take notes better. Maybe you can spend more time reviewing whatever it may be. Make sure you identify a small thing. Now the second step is to change one thing at a time. So if you're trying to adjust and improve your studying instead of saying I'm going to do flashcards now. I'm going to do some usual questions. Anki, I heard Anki was cool. Whatever it may be. Find one thing. Make the adjustment. Then step three is to evaluate a few days or a few weeks depending on what your goal or idea is. See how it got better. And then step number three is to evaluate in a few days, a few weeks depending on what you're adjusting and seeing one. How do I feel? Do you feel better after doing this? Maybe you feel you know more energized after studying. That's a good thing. Or maybe you just do better performance wise on your tests and your exams. That's also a good result. Now what if you don't do well? Step number four is on anything that doesn't go well. First go back to what you're doing that was working and then make a different adjustment. Don't have all your dials kind of adjusted and try to tinker with them. First make sure you get one right and then keep making more and more improvements. And that doesn't go just what you're studying. Go through the productivity. There are things that I've tried to be more productive and they didn't work. So instead of making drastic changes, I went back to what was working. Then I tried new changes. If they worked, I kept them and I kept trying to tinker and tinker and tinker until I felt I was happy with my productivity and I'm making changes on a daily basis. I do this with everything guys. So you should too. But just remember, be happy with where you are. Be okay with making progress. But make sure you are making small incremental dial changes and not switches. So that is this video. I know they're short. That's the point of Motivational Monday is to get you the content to help you enjoy your Mondays as much as you write it. If you enjoyed this video guys, make sure you give this video a like. Subscribe to the channel. Let me know. First of all, if you enjoy this, if you do, I'll keep making more. But with that guys, no further ado. Thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one. Take care guys.


Food and beverage companies frame body weight as a matter of personal choice. Even when we're not distracted, the power of the eat more food environment may sometimes overcome our conscious controls over eating. One look around the room at a dietitian convention can tell you that even nutrition professionals are vulnerable to the aggressively marketed ubiquity of tasty cheap convenient calories. This suggests that there are aspects of our eating behaviors that defy personal insight by flying below the radar of conscious awareness. Appetite physiologists call the result of these subconscious actions passive over consumption.  That was triggered just by a picture of a milkshake. Dopamine gets released, cravings get activated, and we're motivated to eat. Intellectually we know it's just an image, but our lizard brain just sees survival. It's just a reflexive response over which we have little control, which is why marketers ensure that there are pictures of milkshakes and their equivalents everywhere. Maintaining a balance between calories in and calories out feels like a series of voluntary acts under conscious control, but it may be more akin to bodily functions such as blinking, breathing, coughing, swallowing, or sleeping. You can try to will yourself power over any of those, but by and large they just happen automatically driven by ancient scripts. Not only are food ads ubiquitous, so is the food. The types of establishments selling food products expanded dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. Now there's candy and snacks at checkout counters of gas stations and drug stores and bookstores and places that used to just sell clothes or hardware or home furnishings, building supplies. The largest food retailer in the United States is Walmart. There's that jolt of dopamine and artificially stimulated feelings of hunger around every turn. Every day we run the gauntlet and it's become socially acceptable to eat anywhere in your car on the street or packed in a crowded bus. We've become a snacking society. Vending machines are everywhere. Daily eating episodes seem to have gone up by about a quarter from the late 1970s from about four to five occasions a day, potentially accounting for twice the calorie increase attributed to increasing portion sizes. Snacks and beverages alone could account for the bulk of the calorie surplus implicated in the obesity epidemic. And think of the children. Here we are trying to do the best for our kids, role modeling, healthy habits, feeding them healthy foods, but then they venture out into a veritable tornado of junky food and manipulative messages. This commentary, the New England Journal of Medicine, asked, why should our efforts to protect our children from life-threatening illness be undermined by massive marketing campaigns from the manufacturers of junk food? Pediatricians are now encouraged to have the french-fried discussion with parents at the 12-month well-child visit and not wait all the way until year two. And even that may be too late. Two-thirds of infants are being fed junk food by their first birthday. Dr. David Katz may have said it best in the Harvard Health Policy Review, those who contend that parental or personal responsibility should carry the day despite these environmental temptations might consider the implications of generalizing the principle. Perhaps children should be encouraged, but not required to attend school and tempted each morning by alternatives such as buses to the circus, zoo, or beach.