Welcome to the CTS Learning Series, Chapter 5, Testing a Non-OSS-UOC Example. Video 6, Demonstration of an iOSS Conformance Test. In this video, we will demonstrate how to construct a project configuration file for an iOSS-UOC, perform a successful conformance test on an iOSS-UOC, and suggest ways to troubleshoot common errors while testing an iOSS-UOC. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Video 1, we'll be testing Balsa's UOCs. This video in particular will test Balsa's iOSS-UOC. For more information about Balsa and how Balsa is organized, please consult the FACE Technical Standard, the Reference Implementation Guide, and the Software Suppliers Getting Started Guide. Let's open the Project Configuration List and make a new project configuration. Let's name it, CTS Learning Series iOSS Demonstration, and we'll save it in the CTS Learning Series directory. After clicking OK, we are presented with the Project Configuration Builder. For this video, we will be demonstrating the construction of the PCS-UOC. But for more information about each of the options provided in the PCS-UOC, please refer to Chapter 3, Video 4. Let's first select the base directory. I'm going to set the base directory as Home, CTS User. Next, our segment is going to be iOS. Balsa's UOCs are all written in C++, so we will select C++ as our language. Our profile is going to be Safety Base. As that is the FACE profile, the Balsa iOSS UOC is written to, and what we configured the toolchain to test as well. Our partition is going to be POSIX, as our OS does not provide any of the RINX 653 APIs, only POSIX. For our iOSS, we also aren't going to use any OpenGL functions. Next, the option to provide the toolchain configuration file is provided. Finally, the UOP name is used to identify the UOP. Let's enter CTS Learning Series iOSS example. Let's click on the Data Model tab. Data models are not required for iOSs, except if an iOSS is using the Lifecycle Management interfaces. Our UOC does not use the Lifecycle Management interfaces, so we can entirely ignore the Data Model tab. In the Gold Standard Libraries tab, let's provide the location of an empty folder. We will set this as Home, CTS User, GSLs. In the Object Libraries tab, we must define the interfaces the iOSS uses. It should be noted that the beginning of the iOSS Object Libraries tab is different from the PCS and PEE-TRIPLE-S and the TSS Object Libraries tab. An iOSS may define one-to-many IO interfaces. For our purposes, our UOC uses the generic IO interface only. For more information about the types of IO interfaces the iOSS supports, please consult the Face Technical Standard. As mentioned before, analyzing Balsa is out of scope for this video. However, each of the header files that the UOC uses must be provided in order to check for conformance. The list of included header files and paths are listed on the screen. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Video 1, and Chapter 3, Video 4, there are two methods of testing UOCs for conformance. The Target Linker and the Host Linker methods. We will be using the Target Linker method. This means we must provide object files that were compiled against the Gold Standard Libraries. We don't have the object files yet as we haven't generated the Gold Standard Libraries or built Balsa against them. For now, we'll leave it blank. Continuing down, we are provided an option for providing the Factory Functions. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Video 1, and Chapter 3, Video 4, Factory Functions are concrete implementations of methods that allow the CTS to test for implementations of the provided interfaces. The Factory Function header file is generated alongside the Gold Standard Libraries. So before we can provide the Factory Functions CPP file, we must generate the GSLs. For now, we'll leave this blank. Now, we must select the interfaces that the iOSS UOC implements and use. Our iOSS doesn't implement any interfaces, but it does use the Configuration Services Interface and the Health and Fault Monitoring, or HMFM, interfaces. The Notes and Project Info tabs do not contribute to the project configuration validation or conformance testing, so we can ignore these tabs. We won't use them. We have intentionally left the Target Linker section and the Factory Functions sections blank. To fill these sections in, let's generate the Gold Standard Libraries by pressing the Bookmark icon. After the generation finishes, let's take a closer look at what was generated. In the directory, we can see a list of libraries and a readme file. Let's look at the readme file that was generated. The readme lists the valid GSLs that were generated, as well as the associated include directories that should be used to build objects to test with the CTS, including the files that were just generated. Let's take a closer look at those files. If we point to the GSL include directory, we can see the Factory Functions header file and a face subdirectory. Let's open the CTSFactoryFunctions.hpp. Here, we can see the function signatures we must implement in order to be face conformant. These were generated based on the supplied options from the project configuration file. Let's exit this file and look at the face subdirectory. Here, we have the generated header files that we must include while developing UOCs. How to use these files are out of scope for this video series. But it is important to understand that the GSL generation process generates these files as well. For now, what we're focused on is the libraries and factory function headers. Balsa was written to the face technical standard and correctly implements the interfaces required to be conformant to the face technical standard. If you download Balsa from the open group website, it already comes with the factory function implementation that is required to be written. We are going to write the factory function implementation ourselves. Let's do that now by opening a text editor and creating a file called iosasfactoryfunctions.cpp. Let's include the ctsfactoryfunctions.hpp header file and the header files for the iosas UOC, which is where the FIA IO service class is defined that implements each of these functions. Then, we'll copy and paste all of the required functions from the header file to the source file and return a new instance of the class that implements that specific function. Now, the cts may understand that the iosas UOC implements each of the required functions. Let's put the path to this factory functions file in the factory functions location in the project configuration builder. Finally, we need to create our object files. Balsa has a build process that uses make. Although we are not going to analyze the build process, it is important to note that there are two ways of building Balsa. One to build for face conformance and one to build without face conformance. In our case, we are going to build the iosas UOC for conformance. When we build, Balsa detects the gold standard libraries to build against. Balsa contains configuration options to provide the path to the gold standard libraries. Before we build, we must make sure the path is correct or else Balsa won't be able to find the GSLs. Finally, we may enter our build command. Enter make-f makefile.conformance iosas. Balsa will build and create an object file. The file extension for the object file will be .rel. Let's provide the newly created .rel file in the target linker section. We can now press the test UOC conformance button. The progress bar will fill up as the conformance tests are being performed. Just like the data model conformance testing we performed in chapter 4. We are shown the conformance test result with the output file location at the bottom of the interface. It looks like we were successful in our test. In chapter 5, video 7, we will open the performance test report and talk about the test results for non-OSS UOCs. Let's intentionally create an error by creating a new project configuration with no options configured. Let's select the test UOC conformance button and see what happens. It looks like the test returned an error because there was no toolchain among other things. Let's press the back button and then the project validation button. This button tests to see if our project configuration is valid and all options are configured correctly for a conformance test. It looks like we're missing our toolchain file as stated before. Clicking on the bottom right icon allows us to view details of the failed test. Thank you for watching. In the next video, entitled Review of Testing Result, we will explore where a non-OSS conformance testing report is generated, analyze how to read a conformance test report, and analyze the major sections in a conformance test report.


Why EuroLeaks? Why are we releasing the audio recordings from the Eurogroup meetings in which I participated representing Greece as its finance minister in 2015? Because there's no transparency the European Union the European Union doesn't seem to appreciate how crucial transparency is for democracy in our indirect democracies. We vote for representatives to represent us in crucial meetings that make decisions that determine our lives now in the present and in the future and of course our children's lives. If we do not know what our representatives say while representing us it is utterly impossible to pass judgment on them and to decide whether we will vote for them again or not. The failure to keep minutes in the Eurogroups is highly motivated. It is certainly not an oversight. By not keeping minutes, by not recording those meetings in any way they are imposing the right of the powerful to dismiss the less powerful. Because if you represent a country that is hugely indebted, a country that is small, a country that does not carry the leverage of a Germany or France, the absence of minutes means two things. Firstly, it means that if you clash with the powerful within the Eurogroup immediately they are going to be leaks that distort what you said and there will be no recourse to any minutes to prove otherwise. Secondly and even more importantly, even if you manage to strike an agreement within the Eurogroup that is contributing somehow to the welfare of your people indeed of the people of Europe against the oligarchy. There is no way you can prove that that decision was actually reached. That was my experience in 2015 and it occasioned the audio recordings that you now have access to. What will you be able to discern through Euroleaks? You will be able to ascertain for yourself the quality of the proposals that outside my ministry was tabling with the creditors with the Troika. Now why is this important? Because for years now you've been told through the systemic media that there were no such proposals, that whatever proposals were being put to the Eurogroup by myself were just blaster, theoretical, ideological treatises. Judge for yourself. You will hear the president of the Eurogroup and other ministers warn me that if I dare table written proposals within the Eurogroup meetings, that would be the end of the negotiations. That they would have to take the proposals, not any agreement, to the parliament effectively annulling any bargaining significance that they have. At the very same time they were leaking to the press that I was arriving at the Eurogroup meetings without any proposals. You will be able to judge for yourself just by listening to the discussions. Who was the true Europeanist in there? Who was diplomatic, polite, courteous? Who was entering those discussions in the spirit of cooperation with an iron will to bring out a mutually advantageous agreement? And who, on the other hand, and in juxtaposition, walked in there with immense cynicism, with a rude disposition, who it was that did not want an agreement and all they cared for was the immediate capitulation of a freshly elected, democratically elected government. You will actually hear with your own ears the then German Finance Minister, Mr. Wolfgang Scheuble, say explicitly that he wanted to keep the European Central Bank's profits, the profits that the European Central Bank made by buying and selling Greek government bonds that Mr. Scheuble wanted to keep that money for his own federal German budget. You will also have access to the remarkable recordings from the 25th of June Eurogroup meeting. That was the first Eurogroup meeting when I was presented with anything tangible, anything on paper. It was the ultimatum by the Troika. Take it or leave it was what Jeroen Deiserblum, the president of the Eurogroup, said to me. Interestingly, you will also hear within that Eurogroup. Wolfgang Scheuble took his credit, challenging that ultimatum, finding flaws in it which our side had exposed. Flaws, when it came to the financing of the deal that was being put to us as an ultimatum, flaws in particular regarding the legal and institutional framing of that ultimatum. Despite Wolfgang Scheuble's veto of the ultimatum being put to me by the Eurogroup and despite the fact that other ministers sided with Wolfgang Scheuble, the president of the Eurogroup clearly pushed along that way by the Troika that was pulling the strings from some other room, insisted, Janis, you can take it or leave it. This will become abundantly clear to you so that you gain a feel for how these awful decisions are being reached. Why now? Why are we making Euroleaks available to you five years later? This has to do with the domestic scene in Greece. In the last few weeks, few months, we realized that the powers that be here in Greece are weaponizing the fake news that were emanating from the Eurogroup meetings of 2015. They're weaponizing them in order to explain new austerity measures, a new spate of foreclosures and evictions, new legislation for labor that casualizes what is left of our collective bargaining, new austerity and colonial policies that speed up here in Greece and deepen the crisis of our society of the many, while at the very same time the European Union in Brussels, together with the French and German governments that are very significant in mapping out the future of Europe, are failing spectacularly to improve the manner in which important decisions are being made. The Eurogroup still does not keep minutes. The European Union Council is still shrouded in total opacity. It is about time we change this. If Euroleaks being released now helps push the powers that be in Brussels towards more transparency, at least towards keeping minutes in these meetings, that will be a small victory for democracy. I'm often asked whether releasing audio recordings of private conversations is the moral thing to do. Not only is it the moral thing to do, but it is my citizen's duty, my national duty as a Greek and my European duty as a European is to release them to the extent that it exposes how awful decisions are being made behind a veil of opacity on behalf of people who are unaware of the decisions being made on their behalf. Euroleaks is sending a very simple message to the powers that be at the heart of the European Union. We're not going to rest until minutes are taken, until full transparency, until light is let into those closed-door meetings so that citizens know what is being decided on their behalf. And our message to the citizens of Europe, to the citizens of Greece, of Germany, of Portugal, of Spain, join your voices with our voice so that we can bring down the wall that keeps the demos away from democracy.


Is it because of the change our way of living overnight? What turned our resources, our machines? Our whole nation into one vast ocean, producing more and more weapons of war instead of the old materials of peace. Just in the uniform, ready to engage the enemy on every continent and every ocean. Those of which Mr. Wallace spoke. The free and the slave. Let's take the free world first. Our world. How did it become free only through a long and unceasing struggle inspired by men of vision? We believe that in the sight of God, all men were created equal. And from that there developed a spirit among men and nations which is best expressed in our own declaration of freedom. We hold these truths to be selfish that all men are created equal. It is the cornerstone upon which our nation was built and the ideal of all the great liberators. Washington. Jefferson. Garibaldi. Lafayette. Cusco. Bolivar. Lincoln. Lighthouses. Lighting up a dark and foggy world. That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Fighting. Living. Dying. For what? For freedom. That for which men have fought since time began to be free. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of change and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take. But as for me, give me liberty or give me death. But what of this other world? Here, men insisted that progress lay in killing freedom. Here, they were putting out the lighthouses one by one. Here, the march of history was reversing itself. In Italy, it began when an ambitious rabble rouser set his followers marching on rope. The country, like every other country after the last war, was torn by political unrest, hard times, unemployment. The courses were available to the Italian people. They could solve their problems in a free democratic way or they could let someone else do the solving for them. They made the tragic mistake of choosing the second course. They put their trust and faith in this one man. They believed he represented them. Actually, he planned to betray them for the selfish interests of himself and the group back of him. Just as he had early betrayed those who first supported him. In Germany, another and even more forceful demigod set his followers marching from the Munich beer hall. He too had the sinister opportunity to take advantage of post-war chaos. He also had certain distinctive German characteristics to play on. To start with, the Germans have an inborn national love of regimentation and harsh discipline. He could give them that. People had never acknowledged German defeat in the last war and were anxious for revenge. That too, he promised them. The wealthy and powerful industrialists were fearful of losing any of their wealth and power and were ready to back anyone who would retain it for them. He promised to take care of them too. This man cunningly played all these ends against the middle and ruthlessly set out to murder the newborn German Republic as the will of the Emperor. To the Japanese people, the Emperor is God. Taking advantage of their fanatical worship of the God Emperor it was no great trick to take away what little freedom they had ever known. Yes, in these lands, the people surrendered their liberties and threw away their human dignity. They gave up their rights as individual human beings, part of a mass, a human herd. Although these countries were far apart and different in custom and in language, the same poison made them much alike. Each got a new uniform. In Italy, the new bosses wore black shirts. In Germany, the shirts were brown. In Japan, they hid behind the uniform of the army. But really, they belonged to a sinister secret society. Their symbol was a black dragon. The other fellows had to have a symbol too. In Spain, a swastika. In Italy, the old Roman symbol of the fascists. In Germany, they called the new order national socialism or nazism. In Italy, they had a shorter word, fascism. In Japan, they had lots of names for it. The new era of enlightenment. The new order in Asia, the co-prosperity sphere. But no matter how you slice it, it was just plain old-fashioned militaristic imperialism. The Japs would get the prosperity, and the others would get the clothes. They say trouble always comes in threes. Take a good close look at this trio. Remember these faces. Remember them well. If you ever meet them, don't hesitate. Stop thinking and follow me, cried Hitler. I will make you masters of the world. And the people answered, Hire me, Bell of Mussolini. And I will restore the glory that was wrong. And the people answered, Huchae, Huchae. Stop thinking and follow your god-emperor, cried the Japanese warlords. And Japan will rule the world. And the people answered, Honour me. Honour me. Honour me. Honour me. Each system was alike, and the constitutional law-making bodies gave up their power. The Reichstag in Berlin. The House of Deputies in Rome. The Diet in Tokyo. And these elected representatives became collections of stooges, rubber-stamp organizations. Defeat! Applauding on cue the words of the leaders.  Each system did away with a free press and substituted a press controlled by the party. Through their ministries of propaganda, each took complete control of the theater, the movies, the radio. Every cultural activity and every channel of information was controlled by the most important members of the party. Each did away with free courts and trial by jury, and substituted courts and judges run by the parties. Each abolished labor unions and the rights of bargaining for wages. Thank you. Thank you. Let's keep working. Keep working! And under the pretext of patriotism, established a system of forced labor. Each enforced its decrees by an army of secret police who held the power of life and death over every individual. And for the few who still believed in freedom and said so, there was a ready answer. The greatest intellect in the world can be silenced with this. That is an exact translation of the words these black shirts cheer so rustily. Whenever I hear anyone mention the word culture, the first thing I do is reach for my gun. Yes, they had the answers. The blackjack. And the gun. And the weapons of others who stood in the way of the new order. Finally, there is only one obstacle left. Then God must go! Absolutely clear in my own mind, and I think I can speak for the Fuhrer as well. But both the Catholic and Protestant churches must vanish from the life of our people. Thus spoke Dr. Alfred Rosenberg. And if you have any doubt that he spoke for his Fuhrer, here is what happened. Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, were persecuted, arrested, confined in concentration camps. Our Fuhrer is the intermediary between his people and the throne of God. Everything the Fuhrer utters is religion in the highest sense. It is only on one or two exceptional points that Christ and Hitler stand comparison. For Hitler is far too big a man to be compared with one so petty. German classrooms take children from the faith of their fathers and teach them the state as the only church. The choice of the state is the voice of God. First of all, we wanted peace and security and to prove our sincerity. In 1921, we initiated the Washington Disarmament Conference. This resulted in two vitally important treaties. One to reduce the size of the British, Japanese, French, Italian and American fleets. And the other, the Nine Power Treaty which guaranteed the integrity of China. And incidentally, one of the powers signing this was Japan. Later on in 1929, we signed the Kellogg-Bee Impact which was supposed to abolish wars and means of settling international disputes. This pact was signed by 47 nations, including Germany and Japan. President, I have the honor of handing you the London Naval Treaty. Faithful to our treaty obligations, we scrapped more than 60% of our naval tonnage. And our army was reduced to a standing force of 136,000 men, smaller than that maintained by the little state of Romania. We let our hopes for peace become so strong that they grew into a determination not to fight unless directly attacked. We let ourselves be influenced by those who said that we could find security through isolation. The confusion in our way of thinking is apparent in the slice of public opinion as it appeared on Pathé News in 1939. Not for me. This time America should keep out and I know I will. If war breaks out in Europe, I think that this country should heed the advice of a twice president and avoid all foreign entanglements. I haven't decided our dear of European affairs. In the events of war in Europe, I think we should stay out of this entirely. And all our efforts should be made to keep out of the fight. Let Europe fight our own battles. They mean nothing to us. We should bind our own burdens. By all means, no. Yes, fight. No. No. Yes. If my country calls, yes. Yes. Yes. We simply did not want to understand that our individual and national problems were and always will be dependent upon the problems of the whole world. And we had individual and national problems to worry about. Plenty of them. Just as Germany, Italy and Japan had. But we faced them in a democratic way. We passed laws to give working men a chance to improve their luck. We established an insurance program for those without jobs. We began to give all folks protection against want and hunger. We organized the CCC to provide our young men with healthy and useful employment. A federal works program came into building and changed the face of our nation with new homes, bridges, schools. We built great new dams which brought the miracle of electricity to millions of our people. These were some of our accomplishments. But there were others not so creditable. We turned our backs on the League of Nations. We passed the tariff act to set a higher wall of isolation around us. We encouraged lawlessness with the farce of prohibition. But in spite of these mistakes, we never had a thought of losing our free institutions. John Q. Publix still ran the country. He had his choice of voting for Dewey, Wilkie, Roosevelt or anybody else.  Over here, John Q. still read what he pleased. And although he heard of books being burned in other countries, he would have laughed if anyone had told him his books would ever be burned. On Sunday, if he felt like it, John Q. went to any church he pleased. He got a kick out of seeing his kids go up. Perikin was quite unconscious of the fact that some people had this in mind for the little John Q. The children were being trained to kill. John Q.'s kids were giving their pennies to help them have life. It was quite often we laughed. To us, they looked like characters in the musical comedy. They were deadly serious. They were out for world conflict. And what made it doubly serious was that there were 70 million Japanese, 45 million Italians and 80 million Germans. All hopped up with the same idea. Their leaders told them that they were Superman. Peron folk, the Nazis called it. The master race, destined to rule all other peoples on earth. Take a good look at these humorless men. These were to be the rulers of the ruling race. Yes, blindly, and you will attain the rightful place in the world. All other people will be your slaves. That's what they promised them. That Americans, Chinese, Russian, South Americans, all free peoples would work for them and make them rich. And how they ate it up. We shall restore the glory that was wrong. The Pacific is ours. It was inevitable that these countries should gang up on us. The little sullo is our pal, Kurosu, who smiled his way into our hearts in December 1941. Here he and his friends are busy carving up the world in advance, staking out their claims. Take a good look at these claims. Here was the Italy that Mussolini took over in 1922. And almost his first act was to tell the Italians they were the rightful owners of Corsica, Nice, Savoia, Albania, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and a land corridor linking it with Libya. Later on, he had an even bigger dream. The old Roman Empire has existed nearly 2,000 years ago. To dominate all the lands adjoining the Mediterranean. Mari Nostra, our sea, they called it, just as the ancient Romans did. As for the Japanese, they had some ambitions, too. By 1920, they had grabbed off Formosa, Korea, and the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. Then Baron Gishi Tanaka, the prime minister, carefully set down Japanese aims in a document called the Tanaka Memorial. It was presented to the emperor July 25th, 1927. Here was their dream. Manchuria for raw materials. China for manpower. Then a triumphant march through Indochina, Siam, Burma, India, the East Indies, and on through Australia and New Zealand. And in the north, all they claimed was that part of Russia, east of Lake Baikal. That was to be the new order in Asia. Then the Japs would move eastward to crush the United States and really start their coprosperity spirit. Now take a look at the fight the Nazis reserved for themselves. Here's the Germany Hitler walked into. And here's what he wanted. First Europe under his complete political or economic control, leaving Mussolini a share of the loot if he behaved himself. Then the drive to the east through the rich oil lands of Iran, the Niraq, into India. Another push south through Africa. Then from Dakar, jump off to meet the honorary Aryans who were to move in on South America through the Pacific. At the same time, start across from the Scandinavian countries to hook up with his buck-toothed pals coming over from Siberia to join in the conquest of the United States. There it is, gents. All they left us was Shangri-La. And they'd claim that, too, if they knew where it was. If they had a chance, listen. When war comes between Japan and the United States, I shall not be content merely to occupy Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and San Francisco. I look forward to dictating the peace to the United States in the White House at Washington. Yamamoto wrote those words on January of 1941. Yes, the conquering Jap Army down Pennsylvania Avenue. That was the final goal. You will see what they did to the men and women of Nanking, Hong Kong, and Manila. Imagine the field day they'd enjoyed they'd marched through the streets of Washington. But before striking, a preliminary step was necessary. From Berlin, from Rome, from Tokyo, the campaign started. Probe began to confuse, divide, soften up their intended victims, put them on the defensive, scream your abuse, shout your oppressed. The world's wrong. You're right. If you shriek it loud enough and often enough, they'll believe you.  Laban's wrong, they demanded. Living rule, hands are overcrowded. But at the same time, they gave prizes to mothers who bore the most sums. They brought together large groups of young men and young girls for human breeding. One of their leaders wrote, Of course, the children from this assembly line belong to the state to be scientifically trained for conquest. They were the have-nots, and we were the haves. But out of this supposed lack, they built up the greatest war machines the world has ever known. These are the published figures from the German military budget. Actually between 1933 and 1939, a program of rearmament cost more than $80 billion. The matches alone assembled a striking force of 30 Panzer divisions, 70 motorized divisions, 140 infantry divisions, plus the Luftwaffe, the world's largest air force. And they had no raw materials. Think of the bread, the automobiles, the good things of life that the German, Italian, Japanese leaders might have given their people if they had spent this money for peace instead of war. You know what billions we are now spending to match their military force? No. No, these arguments were all smoke screens. When war came, the democracies proved to be the have-nots, and our enemies, the haves. And when war came, where did it come? A date we should remember as well as December 7, 1941. For on that date, in 1931, the war we are now fighting began. The place was Manchuria, the northern-most province of China. 6,000 miles from San Francisco. Manchuria, the first objective in the Tanaka plan. By September 18th, the Japanese, who by treaty patrolled the southern Manchurian railway, had secretly and illegally increased their garrisons. On the Korean-Manchurian border, an entire Japanese army was assembled. Conveniently equipped for a winter campaign, all they needed was an excuse. They made their own. At 10.30 that night, just after the Mukden Express had passed by, a section of track was dynamited causing damage to one rail railways. Pan's honor had been violated. The Japanese railroad garrison launched a coordinated attack on the barracks of the sleeping Chinese army at Mukden. The slaughter was appalling. By midnight, the conveniently placed Japanese army poured across the Korean border and the first open-active aggression, the invasion of Manchuria was on. In four days, they had occupied the whole of southern Manchuria and the whole country. Manchuria became Manchukuo, a puppet state with an obedient stooge on the throne, Henry Pruyi, a weakling whom the Japanese had prepared for the job with seven years of women and song. In Washington, Henry L. Stimson, then Secretary of State, now Secretary of War, sent out a blistering denunciation of the attack. The League of Nations sent a committee of five and including our own General Frank McCoy to Manchuria to investigate. In October of 1932, the committee issued its report. We found that the Japanese occupation of this large part China was not justified on the ground of self-defense. And that the new state which had been set up was a Japanese protectorate rather than a genuine case of Manchurian self-determination. Shortly after, the League condemned Japan as an aggressor nation. It is a matter of common knowledge that Japan's policy is fundamentally inspired by a genuine desire to guarantee peace in the Far East and to contribute to the making of Japan. Japan, however, finds it impossible to accept the report adopted by the assembly. In answer, the Japanese delegates knowing there were no guns behind this condemnation smiled, took up their briefcases, marched out of the League. We found that Japan did not have the ability to march out of the League. More than Manchuria was dead. Collective security was dead. The green light had been given the aggressors. We in the rest of the world knew that these aggressors should be stopped and punished. But we were unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices to back up that opinion. It was impossible to convince a farm boy in Iowa for a driver of a London bus or a waiter in a Paris café that he should go to war because of a mud hut in Manchuria. Yet the subsequent course of history makes it clear that that incident so many miles away is one of the main reasons that you and millions of others are in uniform today. The Japs had Manchuria. Phase number one of the Tanaka Plan was completed. Phase number two, the conquest of China. In 1932 without warning, the Japs attacked the Chinese city of Shanghai. They had to pour more than 75,000 troops into the local battle before capturing the city. This resistance may then decide to shift their campaign to the north. And in 1933 they added the province of Yeho to Manchuria. Yes, the Japs launched the second phase of the Tanaka Plan. But they had yet to finish it. A united nation stands against it. Under the inspired leadership of General Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese people fought and still fight on. What of Japan's proteins? What helpless people were they planning to bomb? Slot them, drive into slavery. Hitler was not yet ready. But Mussolini was. Mussolini had to be. His people were growing restless. Fascism hadn't produced the heaven on earth that he had promised them. So he pulled the old trick of launching a war to divert attention from troubles at home. So Mussolini beat his chest like Tarzan and looked around for a worthy foe. He found one. Ethiopia. Good country for the beginning of a glorious empire. Its army had no machine guns. Its army had no tanks. Its army did have an air force. Exactly one old aeroplane, playing against the nation which had developed the new theory of air war. Of the blitz which would wipe out cities destroy civilians. Man, woman and child. In October of 1935, following the Japanese example, an incident was provoked at the little settlement of Warwall near the border of Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland. Hitler's honor had been violated. Refusing any arbitration, Mussolini moved the whole might of the army through the Suez Canal to overrun the undefended country. Ethiopia's emperor, Haile Selassie, appeared before the League of Nations. I must still fight on until my tardy allies appear and if they never come, I say to you without bitterness, the West will perish. Members of the League half-heartedly stopped trading with Italy. But refused the only thing it will stop any aggressor. Force. Ethiopia was left to herself. Native leaders came to pledge their allegiance. People of Ethiopia with their spears and bare hands faced the guns and the tanks of the invaders fighting desperately and gallantly to save their country from conquest. There could be but one result might triumphed. Italy conquered Ethiopia. Many of our elected leaders warned us of danger. But we were still hypnotized by the fact that two broad oceans stood between us and the rest of the world. We didn't realize that the time when months were needed to span these oceans was ended. That the steamship had cut these months to days and that now the whole Earth's surface could be covered in the space of hours. Yes, we were a nation that wanted peace. But we hadn't yet learned that peace for us depends on peace for all. Nobody would run the risk of war because of some mud huts and barren plains in Ethiopia any more than we would run the risk for some similar huts and plains in Manchuria. Correctly interpreting our attitude, the aggressors were all assure that they could get what they wanted. Japan had started on her march of conquest. Italy had begun her new empire. And now the third gangster. What about him? We'll take him up on our next film and show how he joined his partners and put in his bid. For this is what we are fighting. Freedom's oldest enemy. The passion of the few to rule the many. This isn't just a war.  The free peoples of America and Britain. Of Russia and China. Of Canada. Australia and all the 30 United Nations that have sworn that man shall still remain free. That is the cause in which we fight. We lose it and we lose everything. Our homes. The jobs we want to go back to. The books we read. The very food we eat. The hopes we have for our kids. The kids themselves. They won't be ours anymore. That's what's at stake. It's us or them. The chips are down. Two worlds stand against each other. One must die. One must live. 170 years of freedom decrees our answer.


Welcome and thank you for joining the New America Fellows Program future tense and solid state books for this webinar discussion of Patrick Brandon keeps Empire of pain, the secret history of the Sackler dynasty. I'm a we still you director the fellows program for more than 20 years New America has supported hundreds of fellows who've gone on to publish books, produce documentary films and other dealer reported projects. I'm very grateful to be able to host this conversation with Patrick today, as he talks about a very necessary and very timely conversation about the opioid crisis. Before we start a few housekeeping notes to keep in mind. If you have questions during the event, please submit them through the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and we'll pass them to the moderator. If you need close captioning zoom now provides that function. Please click the CC button at the bottom of your screen and the menu bar. You can sign up for our newsletter and events list so you can also receive invitations for future events like this, and you can find that on our website. And more importantly copies of Empire of pain are available for purchase through our bookselling partner solid state books. You can find a link to buy the book on the little event icon on the page next to both Patrick and Rachel. Before I turn the conversation over to Patrick and Rachel, let me introduce you to them today. Patrick in Keith is a class of 2017 fellow with New America. He's a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the most recently published book, say nothing, a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction was selected as one of the best 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times book review, the Washington Post Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. He was also named one of the top 10 nonfiction books of the decade by entertainment weekly. His previous books are the snake head and chatter. His work has been recognized with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for feature writing and the oral prize for political writing. He's also the creator and host of the eight part podcast, wind of change. Rachel Aviv is a class of 2019 fellow with New America. She joined the New Yorker as a staff writer in 2013. The National Magazine about a range of subjects including medical ethics, criminal justice, education and homelessness. She was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for public interest for a story about the elderly elderly people stripped of their legal rights. She received a Rona Jocelyn Fellow Foundation writers award, and the Scripps Howard Award for reporting about police violence. Rachel was also named a 2020 Whiting nonfiction grant fellow for her book in progress about mental illness. With that Rachel turn the conversation over to you. Hi Patrick. So I remember you saying something. A year and a half ago you had tweeted about you were reading a bunch of documents that had just been released in the Sackler cases and somehow the book emerged. As I understood it from that tweeting process and I wonder where in that like how that happened what was the seed. What was the moment where you knew you had a book as opposed to a story that you had just finished for the New Yorker a couple months earlier. Yeah, good question. So first of all I should say thank you to New America for hosting this and to solid state books, which is really one of my favorite I used to live in DC solid state is a bookstore I really adore, and very glad that they're sponsoring this as well. And thank you Rachel for doing this. It's such a treat to get to talk with you about the book. So, yeah, I had written a piece about the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma their company in 2017 for the New Yorker. I came out in late 2017. And I thought a little bit about maybe trying to do a book after that piece came out but I felt as though there just wasn't enough material for me to write the book in the way that I would want to write it so you know I tend to write stories that are very, I mean as do you Rachel, you know stories that are very kind of closely focused on on people and the connections and relationships in their lives and the choices that they make and I felt as though in writing about this family that wouldn't cooperate with me wouldn't talk with me, you know, to this day I haven't met the vast majority of the Sackler you know I did the people that I write about in the book you know people I haven't met in person. So there's always a kind of hubris associated with that right with writing what people that you don't have access to. I just felt as though I couldn't. I just couldn't feel like I was inside the room, like I knew who they were I knew how they talked. I didn't feel as though I'd be comfortable characterizing how they thought, or, or behaved behind closed doors. It was quite it was over a year later when the state of Massachusetts did something that no other state had done up until that point they pretty much every other state was suing Purdue Pharma the company over its role in the opioid crisis but more Moreheely the Attorney General Massachusetts became the first state Attorney General to sue individual members of the Sackler family, and in doing that she made public all of this internal documentation. And so yeah I had this thing where I was reading this complaint, the Moreheely's office put together, and was quoting all of these incredible emails, including you know emails from some members of the Sackler family, and they were so appalling to me, and so revealing that I think I knew by the time I had finished this pretty extensive thread in which I was kind of live tweeting these documents I just thought I have to write a book I mean it you know there's both the material for me to do it in a way that I think could be quite vivid and interesting as a story about people making choices, but also there's almost a moral imperative to do so because I was so shocked by by the things they said. I was also thinking about, like how you manage your feeling kind of rage when you're reading or you're appalled as you read, but like as you write. You're in a tone of rage that's like unsustainable or it's like aggressive on the reader. And I also was thinking about how, if you had met them in person you might have like had some shreds of sympathy or empathy for them but the fact that you had that contact, it allows you to sort of, it cultivates your anger even more and I guess I wondered like how consciously you had to work at like managing a tone that wasn't too indignant. I mean, so there's two separate, there's two separate things there right the the tone question was one I thought a lot about where there is a there is a kind of register of like high moral outrage that some people write in and it's really enjoyable sometimes to read those that type of writing. I don't mean this in a, in a pejorative way at all I just just as an example it's like if you read Matt tie be, you know, who famously, you know, talked about Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid. In any number of other writers there is a sense in which there's a kind of an indignation that's right on the surface of, of the writing and I really didn't want to do that for a variety of reasons I just thought that in some ways the recording and and I think that the the material kind of speaks for itself. And so in some ways, I wanted to just dial back my own editorializing it's certainly in there like you can see my point of view I think probably the reader can register when I'm being a little bit sarcastic. But I sort of felt as though it would stifle the material in some in some weird way if I if I tried to kind of put too much spin on the ball. There's a separate issue though which is this issue of like people who don't talk to you and how much. I mean I think about this stuff all the time because I often read about people who won't talk to me. And I agree with you that it's it's harder. It's harder to shiv someone if you've spent a lot of time talking with them. That doesn't mean I don't do it, and I've certainly had instances in which I spent a great deal of time speaking to somebody for a piece and then they never talked to me again.  I see it describing these facts the way I see them. But having said that I did you know I, I do feel some empathy for the Sacklers in a weird way to me if they were just purely purely evil people who set out to do this, or even just purely greedy I mean greed is a huge part of this but if this was the only psychological ingredient in play, I think it would be a much less interesting story what what's interesting for me and where I try to understand them is the amount of denial that they're in and that they're kind of stubborn refusal to acknowledge that what they thought was such a great idea actually was catastrophic. Yeah. I mean another amazing aspect of the book is like the way in which you talk to sort of the invisible workers for the family like someone who mows their lawn, the housekeeper, the yoga instructor, and then incredibly the doorman who sees Bobby Sackler jump to his death. I want to know how you found that man and then whether he had been sort of waiting for decades to like unload this incredibly fraught experience or what his relationship with this information that he had never shared was and sort of how you approached him. Yeah, I mean he he was so I have to be a little bit careful because this story I learned about the death of Bobby Sackler through a source who took me off off to it. And this source also helped me find. He had been a doorman in the building for a long time. I didn't get the feeling he was very candid about it and his, his memory was extremely precise so my the person who took me off to this story. He had a conversation with him at my request, initially about it, and came back and took notes and came back to me and relayed that conversation, kind of point by point and then I ended up calling him. And we had and he described the whole thing a new and it was just, you know, you've had this experience as well I'm sure but it's always just comforting. You know, I kind of evaluate not just somebody's credibility but how good their memory is describing an event that happened long ago, and a traumatic event. But the details were just kind of point for point very very precise. About what he had experienced. But it was. I mean he, you know, he, I think we're so far away that he didn't he didn't seem to be. He didn't express any trauma to me but, but, but look, I mean he, there are details, quite gruesome details associated with, as you can imagine, of, you know, body falling nine stories, and kind of cracking open on the pavement. He recounted to me that I, I chose to leave out of the telling of that episode just because it felt. I don't know exactly what the word is but kind of cruel or distasteful to to get sort of too far into the like anatomical implications of what happens to a body when it falls that that far, but he did describe that stuff to me in some length at some length and I think that was one of the invisible employees I mean this was something that I found very moving talking to suffer Reno that the there are actually a number of incidents like this because there was a woman who was a housekeeper for many many years that I spent a lot of time talking to who had similar stories but it's funny these kind of moments of tenderness between like alienated rich people and the, the like domestic staff who happened to be the only people on hand when tragic things happen. So there were, I didn't write about this in the book but I mean there are conversations about you know like when Mortimer Sackler the older Mortimer Sackler his marriage falls apart and he's kind of like sitting there in his underwear like incredibly bummed out like, you know, trying to figure out what he's going to do with his life, talking to his housekeeper and and she had very fond memories of him. And similarly with Saffirino Perez I mean he's the one who tells Muriel Sackler that her son has just died, and then he's the one who finds a blanket and covers the body. And the intimacy of that was very moving to me. Another thing I remember you saying, maybe a couple years ago I don't even know what the context was actually I think the context was some of your first book, maybe, and you were joking that it's just as bad to be late to a story, too late to a story as too early to a story. And, you know, there was, so obviously you've got this story at the right time but there probably was a question about when does it end, because like there's still legal. There's still stuff that might emerge from the legal process and I wondered like how you know where your resolution is or just where to stop. I want a great question. Yeah, the, my, my first book was about. It's not a very good book I wrote this book called chatter and I was very young when I wrote it and it. But it was about the NSA and wiretapping by government agencies and it was very hard thing to write a book about, you know, as at the time kind of a non journalist. But it was funny because it came out about a year before all of these big scandals associated with warrantless wiretapping and in the Bush administration and then obviously you know much later in the Obama administration Snowden and all this stuff. But I, at one point I was talking to this guy, I was writing a story about kind of walls like hedge funds and I was talking to this investor guy and I made some joke about how my, my first book I was like a little, I was sort of ahead of the curve basically came out you know too soon and he, he said that he sort of chuckled and said yeah you know it's funny in investing like there's there's no real meaningful distinction between like being ahead of the curve and just being wrong. And with this one I don't know I mean I, I think there was a there was a frustration for me which is that the story was playing out in very much in real time at the end of last year in the beginning of this year. And I was trying to figure out where does this end. And for a variety of reasons we wanted to finish the book and have it come out around now. The kind of machinery of publishing is such that you don't get to just pick when you, when you drop a piece of a piece of writing. So we don't really know the ending. And we probably we probably will know what the end game is by say August, where the bankruptcy will be resolved and we'll know whether or not all these lawsuits against the Sackers are going to move forward or, or be stopped effectively by a bankruptcy judge. What happened was like I just kind of got some clarity on where I thought things broadly speaking would end which is to say, Sackers won't face criminal charges, they'll get to keep the va, they'll put up you know several billion dollars to try and remediate the opioid crisis. But they won't acknowledge any wrongdoing, and they will walk away with the vast bulk of their fortune that they made from oxycontin during a time when their company we now know was committing felonies and has since played guilty to committing felonies. I think that's probably roughly where we're going to end up and so I felt okay about the ending the book I mean it's my last book had a kind of very distinctive ending because I made this discovery about a murderer at the end. And I'm aware that that the ending of this book may not be quite as it may not have quite the same like Agatha Christie. I don't know if you have any reactions. But I can live with that and I think that in some ways part of the one of the themes I was trying to highlight with this book is that if is it in any story about billionaires in this country. It could cause tremendous harm. If you're waiting for some resolution where you have a kind of feeling of catharsis and accountability and and justice reigning in the end, you'll be waiting a long time. I'm also really fascinated by the world of like giving money to art charities, like I guess that had not been a world that I really like thought about in terms of what are people's motivations what are their ulterior motivations like what does that do for someone. And I remember you saying that like that world had been like, hotly hard to crack like you totally cracked, like all you know what was going on in the pharmaceutical world and the corruption there. But I guess I wondered like, what were some of the challenges you ran into in this more like noble seeming culture. Yeah, it was a little hard to break in with some of the reporting there. I mean I did end up with quite a few people talking to me on on very deep background where they, you know they wouldn't allow me to quote them in any way. I think in large part because, well for a few reasons I mean one because people weren't necessarily authorized to talk. And to because I think a lot of these institutions are very scared. And I think in some of these institutions that it's not just with the Sacklers either but but a lot of art museums and universities that have taken money over the years. And I think in the specific case of the Sacklers what I was able to establish is that a lot of them privately, they all knew. To some greater or lesser extent that this was kind of blood money that this was this was dirty money that they were taking. And they just hope people wouldn't notice and that. And this would be especially true the Sacklers a lot of these institutes these relationships were very long standing relationships between the families and these particular you know the museums for instance in the universities. So if you have somebody who's only been working there for the last two or six or 12 years they came in, and there's this already this existing relationship and this legacy with this name. I don't know that people necessarily felt that it would be easy for them to unwind and it's just the kind of thing that would be so difficult to do and legally fraught, and it might set a worrisome precedent for your other donors. And so I think there was this general sense that like that's just way too big a lift, nobody was going to do that, electively, they would much prefer to just try and kind of keep their heads down and write it out and in fact after I published this piece in 2017 the New York Times, called around to I think 21 cultural institutions to ask them, like in light of these new revelations how do you feel about taking soccer money. And they didn't get a single comment on the record from anyone suggesting that they found it problematic. They got a lot of either people refusing to take their calls, or alternatively saying you know we love the Sacklers we stand by them. We'll keep taking their money. There's really only when the photographer Nan Golden came into the picture that I think the calculus started to change for these institutions. Another incredible like moment that I will never forget one reading is the moment where you're talking to Richard Sackler is college roommate. And he tells you that Richard Sackler spent a summer, trying to like find a way to pharmaceutically improve the human orgasm. I would love if you would tell it like talk a little bit about what that conversation was like and how you got to the place where that was what he was telling you and whether he realized that this is felt like a very emblematic memory and if so then how do you sort of enter into that memory and expand it so it becomes a scene. Yeah, so Richard Capet. One of the things that's very strange and wonderful about writing, you know, big, big pieces in a in a national magazine that lots of people read as, as I'm sure you've experienced as well you. When you're working on a story nobody knows the world doesn't know you're working on it and so you're kind of quietly I always think of it as you're like, you're, you know, it's like when you, when you stay in a strange house or a strange hotel room and you're trying to like, find your way to the bathroom in the dark you know you don't really know exactly where the furniture is and you're kind of feeling around. And you don't know what's there. And so you're just kind of feeling along and then the piece comes out. And at that point, almost invariably I start hearing from people who I wish I had known to look for when I was writing the piece. This happens every time. And with this with the Sackler piece had happened in a really profound way, lots and lots of people who had known the family over the years got in touch and it was one of those things where I was kicking myself because I wish that these were people I could have talked to when I was doing the piece. But the rabbit was one of the people who got in touch with me and initially, you know, I wasn't writing a book, but we, we kind of developed a relationship and started talking back and forth, and we talked through a whole lot of memories that he had of Richard Sackler memories beyond what are in the book. And many of them very, very revealing I thought of Richard Sackler's character. And that story in particular, I wanted to capture, because I mean I think now Richard Caput looks back at the person that Richard Sackler became and he's quite horrified. But at the time Richard Sackler was kind of a magical guy to hang out with, you know, he was, he was brilliant, and he had this sense that anything is possible and I think this was what I wanted to try and capture and the reason I like that story is that you have some But for somebody else would be some idle fancy for Richard Sackler who had grown up with great wealth and this kind of headlong enthusiasm for his own passions. There's this sensible like let's just do it let's not let anything stand in the way and so the two of them were very interested in the physiology of orgasm. And for Richard Caput who was like a working class kid from the center of Long Island. And I thought oh it's you know, physiology of workout interesting subject why not. But also I need to get a summer job and Richard Sackler said nonsense like we need to study the physiology of orgasm let's take this seriously. And so the two of them spent the summer, you know, pouring over obscure medical texts and traveling to Woods Hole to to interview some some renowned physiologist there. I wanted to try and capture some of the infectious sense of fun that Richard Sackler had because I do think that it's not totally dissimilar with oxycontin there's that sense of a kind of a eureka moment and then a willingness to just absolutely plunge after it in this very headlong manner. Which I think ultimately ends up becoming quite dangerous. So I'm seeing a note to remind everyone that they can ask questions in the, I guess in the Q&A box. And maybe I'll just ask the question that I'm seeing here to encourage others to ask to this question is in the upcoming HBO special crime of the century will you reveal anything new that is not in the book and this is from Ed Bish. Hi Ed. Ed has been a very important activist on this subject, going back decades, had lost a son to oxycontin. And I'm glad you're joining us Ed. The, I really couldn't have written this book without the activism of people like Ed. There's a lot in this. So there's, I should just to back up for people who don't know there is an HBO documentary it's a two part film made by Alex Gibney who's a great Oscar winning documentary maker. Coming in I don't know the exact premiere date but it's in early May. I was a consultant on it and I was involved in the first episode. It's called Crime of the Century and it's about not just Purdue and oxycontin but actually more broadly speaking about the role that the American pharmaceutical big pharma played in the opioid crisis. I don't know that I reveal anything all that new beyond what's in the book I can tell you there is a lot in this documentary. Alex did amazing reporting and there's some stuff that shocked me and I feel as though I'm, I'm beyond, you know, jocable at this point. But yeah I'd encourage you all to watch and thanks for for tuning in. Okay, since there's no more questions I'm just going to ask a selfish question, which is how you know you talked about your first book being bad which I haven't read it so I can't like I want to defend it but I won't. What is it that you like and then and then I feel like each book has not only got each book has gotten better and better and I wonder like what it is. Obviously as you get older maybe you just learn to write better but is there something in that you learned about what makes a book that you sort of didn't have access to earlier on that you've been like honing book by book. I think. I mean I think so that first book was just a weird book I wrote it when I was a law student it was about the National Security Agency which is just an incredibly hard subject to write about. And it ended up being so hard to report that I kind of defaulted to a. Really brilliant editor. Eileen Smith who's now at FSG but at the time was at random house who gave me when I was halfway through the book she gave me the book out of sheer rage by Jeff dire. Now to sheer rage wonderful book for those of you who don't know it but it's a book about Jeff, how Jeff dire tries to write a book about DH Lawrence and fails and the whole thing becomes kind of this very self conscious exercise. And he pulls it off beautifully. And I, you know, chatter in some ways was my kind of pale imitation of that which was like what what does it mean for a young curious citizen to try and write a book about the biggest intelligence agency in the United States, and there's so much trouble kind of getting to the truth what are the implications of that. And in retrospect all of that just feels a little meta to me. I feel as though I'm a better reporter now and so that that's the sense in which I, it feels like a weird outlier. I was kind of learning how to write a book when I wrote it. But I, you know, starting with my next book after that the snake head I think I, I sort of found my voice I found the way in which I like to tell these stories which is these kind of narrative investigations and told through people and with a lot of kind of seen work and I mean one of the big things for me would be I try and avoid huge chunks of exposition I try and sort of sneak in my exposition or fold it in wherever I can so that I'm not there's never a point where you kind of turn the page and then it's like and now a chapter on the history of whatever it is, whatever the very dry subject is. So it's always a question of how much can I distill that stuff so that you don't, so that you get what you need but you don't notice it when you're getting it. And I don't know I feel as though the in a strange way that it was the big transition for me was from chatter to the snake head and that was when I knew the type of book I enjoyed writing and and I think I've gotten better at it. But the, but the template has been pretty solidly in place since then. Now, questions are pouring in. So, can you talk a little this is from Vince visor, can you talk a bit about your experiences adapting your print work to TV shows and movies. Oh, yeah. So, um, this is a weird one I never talk about this because nobody, most people don't know about it and so they don't ask me about it. I, you know, for years I was a freelance journalist, and I when I was writing for the New Yorker I was a freelancer I was not on staff and so I did all kinds of jobs to make ends meet. And one of them was I started working as a screenwriter. I don't know, quite a while ago probably 1214 years ago. There's nothing you would have seen because none of it's been made. But it's it's fairly typical of Hollywood that that you can make a decent living writing scripts for movies and TV shows that that never see the light of day. I have actually never adapted my own work. However, so it's a kind of strange like church and state division thing that I have where it would be weird for me and never say never I might I might do it at some point but I just my nonfiction hat means that it's I've adapted the work of lots of other people, both fiction and nonfiction as a screenwriter. And lots of other screenwriters have adapted my work and in fact there are a few projects in the works now, including a limited series based on say nothing. But you know there's a great team of writers working on that who are much better at this stuff than I am. And I'm kind of available to them as a as a, you know, as a sounding board. I think it would just be weird for me to come in and start. I think it's impossible to adapt a piece of nonfiction into a good movie or TV show without fictionalizing at least somewhat. And I think it would be strange for me as a journalist to take those kinds of liberties and color outside the lines. It's like two different parts of my brain. It's a strange, it's a strange distinction to make but an important one for me. This question interests me too. Does your training as a lawyer help you as a reporter in general, and did it help with this project in particular. Yes, and yes. I mean some of the you know I took out loans to go to law school and it may be that some of this is me rationalizing what in fact was a spectacularly foolish decision to get a law degree when I kind of knew at the time I didn't want to be a lawyer and wanted to be a writer. But so if you'll, you know, if you'll indulge what may be rationalization on my part yeah it helps. I don't know that one needs to go to law school to learn the things that I that helped me, you know, I think there are lots of courts reporters and people who write about criminal justice, who I think, you know, are pretty easily able to acquire the same types of knowledge, but it helps to know the court system it helps to be able to find documents. It helps to have a certain shorthand with lawyers, a lot of my sources were lawyers. A huge amount I mean, truly, you know, I don't know how many pages, I'll take all in but 10s of 1000s of pages of material that I had to kind of distill into this book came from court documents. I have a question about that, like, where is your, you know, when you're going through 10s of 1000s of pages of court documents I feel like I often want to trust my own boredom like if I'm feeling bored I should start worrying about the story I'm working on. But then there comes context in which you may have been feeling bored I guess I wonder like what is your. Do you manage concerns about when you're going through 10 how did you manage that process of 10,000 pages of documents, hundreds of which were probably not useful to you. Okay, so first of all I should say that I feel as though you just, you just articulated what is like for me one of the most important things I've, I've learned as a writer and I feel like I only learned it fairly recently which is to trust your own boredom. I mean that's a perfect way of putting it and I. It took me a long time to I think to. To really appreciate that that if that if your own eyes are glazing over as you go through something, you don't then need to like do to flee take that and present that to the reader that they will glaze over as well. So I very much trust my own boredom I think the thing for me is that the, my process tends to just be very very low yield and so it's always. I'm looking for these like gold threads I'm looking for one line, one image, and it's always been the case that you know sometimes you read a whole book and what you get out of that book is a single image. And with these core documents it's the same way and it's agonizing because you have to go through it all. And if ideally you know they're optically scan and you can control f your way through for certain terms. I had a great conversation at some point with a lawyer friend who had done document review as an associated a law firm, which is kind of the same idea where you're going you're just churning through 10s of thousands of pages of stuff. Who told me gave me this great tip which is that you should always first your search your initial search terms should always be like exclamation points or in curse words that that'll you know you'll get right to the meat of it. But the, it was hard I mean I just, I mean I'll tell you this this crazy story, which is sort of emblematic of the way this whole thing is gone for me. But we'll give you a sense of how low yielded is at a certain point pretty late in the game when the book was close to done. I got an email from a call from a source of mine who was a lawyer, who'd been involved in some of this litigation who said, I have 40 boxes of documents I want to send you. And I'm going to mail them to you like I have a, or it wasn't even that this person was going to get like a man with a van to drive 40 boxes of documents to my home which is just outside New York City. And the problem, and so my I salivated at the prospect was very, very exciting. But the problem is that the Sacklers have been threatening to sue me. And one of the first things they did was they sent me what's called a litigation hold, which basically is a lawyer sent me this formal letter saying you are hereby on notice that we may be suing you. You can't just destroy any evidence that could be used in this eventual lawsuit against you. So, I consulted with my lawyer double day and my lawyer at the New Yorker.  Because you just have to keep a record in case they sue you. And I told my wife that 40 boxes of documents were going to be arriving, and that we could never throw them away. And she wasn't thrilled that the idea. That's why you're going to have a new house now. Yeah, exactly. There were some sort of questions about like the, you know, where in our house do we do we put such such such documents. So they ended up having to fly to the documents. So they're in this other city. I don't want to name it because the sort of, I don't want to give away who my source was, but I flew to another city in the middle of the pandemic stayed there for four days. Went through every page of these boxes of documents and didn't end up using a single thing. If I had not gone, like only gone through half of them I would still be tossing and turning wondering what I might have missed was the guy who gave it to you disappointed like did he feel like he or were you annoyed at him for sort of over playing his hand. Not at all not at all not at all I was very grateful to him to be honest he may be I hope he's not he's not tuned in here but the I don't think he knows that I didn't end up using anything. Of course I was like, you know I was very very thankful that he made all these available to me was partially because of what if I had if it had been a year earlier I probably would have used a bunch of stuff but by the time I was seeing a lot of this stuff I'd already seen, you know. Yeah. So there's a question from Emma petite, I may be pronouncing the name wrong. In the traditional standpoint how do you even begin to think about structuring this sort of story that spans generations to the chapter breaks come naturally. Oh, and this is sort of related so I'll read that one as well. From Jessica colleague Clark. Can you tell us a bit about how you begin a book at what point in the writing process do you find the beginning. Does someone with your experience still have fall starts. All starts all the time. Yeah so let me. Okay, yeah I can I can sort of take both of those so the. I honestly don't know how it works for other writers I don't know what's normal I do know that my as I've gotten older and done this more and this would be true with with individual magazine pieces as well. It's going to be, it's like 90% reporting and 10% writing, the writing tends to happen very quickly at the end. The thing that's the thing that's weird, I mean I don't know maybe others do this as well but the thing that has has been kind of an evolving thing for me is that I, I now start structuring the story. Very very early in the reporting like my when I devise the structure has gotten earlier and earlier and earlier so it's this thing where the reporting is the vast bulk of the time, and I don't write until the end, but I'm. But what I found is that it's really helpful early on to start thinking what is the structure of this book what is the story that I'm telling how early on really early I mean I you know I couldn't tell you. Exactly but from the very beginning I'm thinking about.  And then it's just this questionable how do you arrange those so that there's at a certain point there's a kind of a, you know who are my characters what's the time period. And I just that as an as an organizing principle I find that very helpful because the danger for me is that otherwise I'll just research forever and there'll be these really fascinating rabbit holes and spend. I stumble on something and it's like oh my god I look at these four books I haven't read I should really look into those and then they mentioned these people who are still alive and I should probably call them and interview them and, and I'm wired to enjoy that and find it. There's a kind of compact frankly like a slightly compulsive quality that I have to to turn over those stones. And just the danger is that if I don't if I don't have some real discipline about saying that might be very interesting but it feels extraneous to the story you're telling. Then I'll just do it forever. So, so I'm structuring from fairly early on. I'm always thinking about like where does where do you drop the needle on the record like where does this story begin. When I found this book starts with a deposition. I think Rachel said to me when she read it like that the, you know, deposition like doesn't seem like a naturally all that thrilling way to start. It was amazing that you made it really that's what I was. I see I find this is just me I find nothing more thrilling than a deposition but the. But when I found that I just I knew I want I thought the idea of starting with Kathy Sackler who is less familiar to people than Richard Sackler. The idea of having Mary Joe White, who is a former US Attorney in New York and a big, you know, she's one of the lawyers long standing loyal lawyers for the Sacklers who I think have has has really abetted their ability to get away with what they've gotten away with for so long and Mary Joe White is a very revered figure in legal circles lots of people really admire her. I think it was important for me to, you know, put her out there right where she belongs at the at the side of Kathy Sackler. And then there's this kind of amazing moment in the deposition that it was like in one little scene you sort of had the whole thing. Where you get into this question of like did your family start the opioid crisis, and then you get this reverie where Kathy Sackler talks about this building where her father and uncles used to work, and it just. It just felt like a good transition back to 1913. So, so that felt like a logical place to start but the, the chapter breaks, I don't know, I mean it's. You told me something useful the other day that like I went when you were reading my book draft that you should like that in your earlier books you didn't you would have these long endless chapters and that you suddenly realize that like a reader needs, like at every moment where you think there should be a chapter break there probably should be. I mean I don't listen that's not. This is my own kind of feeling and maybe I'm. I think a lot about the reader I think a lot about. And I think about myself when I'm reading I think about the fact that I'm often tired of like had a glass of wine and a long day and I know I've got 20 minutes between when I lie down in bed and when I fall asleep. And so maybe I'm, I'm being too accommodating, but I have this terror always that. That I'm going to lose the reader and so one of the things I did think about is yeah so the snakehead had these big long chapters he's like, you know probably 30 page chapters. And with say nothing I very deliberately wanted to go shorter and just and write chapters. I'm going to quote my, I'm going to quote my 11 year old son, my 11 year old son is really into magazines right now which is hilarious and warms my heart. I was almost worried because I just felt he should be reading books, you know, longer things he's 11. And we had this funny conversation where I said like you know Lucian you should really could I interest you in some books I'm glad you're reading the New Yorker that's very precocious but you know, be good to read something that sustains a little longer. And he like scoffed at me and said, I don't read anything I can't finish them one sitting. I'm impressed he's reading the New Yorker also. I'm impressed I'm worried but the, but I did think it kind of capture something where I wanted a chapter to be something that you could digest in the city. Yeah. Okay, so there's some more this. What are Patrick's personal views on arts organizations and universities returning or not what some consider laundered money. Um, couple things I think it's incredibly complicated and I don't mean to suggest that from the perspective of these institutions. This is a simple matter I think it's legally complex it's ethically quite fraught. I've heard people make arguments to me where people work at nonprofits of one sort or another where they say I do not care where the money comes from I don't care how dirty it is I can do good things with this. You know, you leave it to me to take this money and turn it into something good. And I can I can see some sense in that kind of argument. Having said that, I think reputation laundering is real. And one of the things I also tried to expose in the book is that the relationship is that when you, when you're on the outside and you hear that there's some great gift, given by some magnanimous plutocrat.  And part of what I tried to show in the book is that when you get inside those and you read the like inter office memoranda from the people who actually work at the museum or the university. You realize that often it's a kind of exploitative relationship between the donor and the institution the donors getting a great deal out of it. As Arthur Sackler's longtime attorney says in the book, if you're putting your name on it. It's not charity that's a transaction. That's a business deal. So, I think that, you know, I frankly I'm kind of impressed by some of these institutions that have taken a stand Tufts University for many years, kind of did the wrong thing and didn't just ignore the truth about the Sackler's but deliberately obscured it when Sam Kenyona's book Dreamland, very great book about the opioid crisis that that has sections on the Sackler's came out. There was some discussion about assigning it to Tufts students and the administration killed that plan because they thought it would be awkward for the Sackler's Tufts subsequently took down the Sackler name because medical students basically protested and said I don't want to learn to be a doctor in a country named after this family. The family threatened legal action against the school you've seen NYU subsequently do the same thing. I think most of these places are doing this only under pressure, either from their own students or for people like Nan Golden. But I suspect that in the coming months and years you're going to see it happen more and more. This may be our last question it depending on your response but after a long comprehensive story like this.  Is there ever a feeling of how do I top this and this is from by the door. Sorry if I mispronounced. I mean on the hot you know what do I do next thing I well no I'll take those I'll take those in reverse order. I don't have any of the how do I top this thing I you know it's funny somebody asked me this question about say nothing recently, like whether it was because you know it was widely read and certainly and get more kind of critical recognition that my two prior books, whether that was inhibiting for me not at all. I don't it's just sort of not the way I operate and the other thing to remember is like this is my fourth book like I know that it doesn't. I know that sometimes it works you know sometimes you get a great lottery ticket and sometimes you don't and to me the answer is not to be precious about it it's just to keep working and you know by another ticket and see what happens and so you know I don't worry about that. I am really really tired at the moment. Having done the book in the pandemic and also released a podcast this past year. And so I think I'm going to do some magazine writing for a while and hope that I can just kind of get back into the. It's like a different kind of metabolism doing pieces but I miss it so I'm excited to get back into that. I'll just ask my own tiny little question in our last few minutes, but I read somewhere that you wrote most of the book on your bed, and I did want to know like what pandemic what how pandemic change how the pandemic maybe change the book how it changed your work or writing habits, if at all. And what will you hold on to any of that. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I would not advise writing a book on your bed if you can at all avoid it. It's not good for your back. The, in this case we, you know we have one home office and and my wife has a more serious job than mine so one of us had to be in there and it didn't have to be me. The, it was a weird one I mean the pandemic, you know, there are still some items in archives that I haven't been able to get my hands on and to go back to what I was saying earlier about my own neuroses. It drives me crazy I still think about these letters. These letters at UCLA, there are these letters at National Institute of Medicine. You know there are these archival items that I have been trying to access for a year and haven't been able to. And I wish I could just let it go but it bothers me. So that was frustrating. But I actually found from a reporting point of view that it really weirdly it was, it was a huge boon the pandemic was very very helpful because, as you've experienced to Rachel like a lot of. I find it's the worst part of the job in a way is when you look up somebody's phone number, a stranger, you have to cold call them. A lot of the time all you can find publicly available is their landline. And I did find in the pandemic that particularly at the beginning of the pandemic that when this was when I was making a lot of these calls to former Purdue Pharma employees people who work for the Sacklers just calling out of the blue, that it was amazing to have people like locked down in their home they were much more likely to answer their, their own phone, the, I would get, particularly some of the old timers you know it's just amazing because I would like, it was just awesome because you would, you call me got they would like pick up on the first ring. And if you're like really a book. Like, let's talk about that. There are some people I could, you know, I couldn't get rid of them they would, they would keep calling me. In that regard, I don't know that I can replicate that beyond the pandemic, but it was, it was helpful. Well, thank you for talking and thanks to the audience. Thank you Rachel for doing this.


In my clinical practice, bloating, anemia, and anxiety are actually a very, very common trifecta that I see. Another combination is digestive problems with anxiety or depression or insomnia. So why did these two things occur together with each other? Well, Chinese medicine has a very simple theory that actually explains why they are so common, which is really a clinical observation. What's up guys? Alex Hein, Chinese medicine doctor, acupuncturist, and author of the health book Master of the Day. So I've included two very important links below this video. The first is a free download for daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. The second thing is if you'd like to become a patient of mine, there's info below this video on how to become a patient, where my clinic is, and more information on telemedicine as well. So let's talk about the real link between let's just say digestive problems and anemia. In Chinese medicine, there are a few common sayings throughout history. One of them is that the spleen generates the blood. The second is that let's just say generally the digestion is the root of your postnatal energy or life force. So Chinese medicine has this concept that you're born with a predestined or genetic constitution. Some kids are born very sickly. Some are born pretty immune to sickness and they have good health. These are just genetic predispositions based on our parental genetics. That is stored in Chinese medicine, we believe, in the kidneys. So that's one of the reasons why we say, you know, if you have like the burnt out CEO executive type, they're working 70 hours a week from the time they're 20 to the time they're 80, but by the time they're 39 or 40, they're half or mostly gray. Because in Chinese medicine, excessive use of your will depletes your kidneys. If your kidneys are depleted, one of the things that it manifests in is the way your hair is. So that's just in terms of general concepts. These are two very important sayings because the spleen generates the blood. So let's talk about the blood. There are two really important and clinical observations that most people practicing medicine make. The first is that anemic patients often have digestive problems or they have poor circulation, they're cold. They can have issues with their hair thinning. Female anemic patients have issues with their menses, usually getting lighter and lighter, fatigue, brain fog. They have general systemic physiological symptoms of digestive problems. The second observation is that modern formulas, like one of the modern formulas called Su Jun Zitang for gentlemen decoction is well studied.  And it's well studied clinically to increase values related to your blood, so related to your red blood cells as well as values related to your platelets. So what is the link between specifically digestive problems now talking about anemia or anxiety? In Chinese medicine, you have these basic concepts, right? You have things that are considered more superficially depleted, like a chi level depletion. Let's just say for the sake of the argument that emotions are chi level relatively shallow.  But then an hour later, you might be fine or you go for a walk or a workout and you feel good. Other pathologies are much deeper. Like, for example, a blood level pathology in Chinese medicine is often something that is a fairly deep level of depletion. Now, the blood in Chinese medicine is often related to the emotional states as well as hormonal states. And I would argue often the status of neurotransmitters, for example. So prolonged depletion of the blood, which can come through, for example, lifelong digestive problems. This kind of spleen-chee deficiency I've talked about here can then lead to a kind of picture where the blood is not being generated from healthy digestion. Those resources are not being regularly generated. It can come from extreme exhaustion from working 60, 70 hours for years and years and years. It can come if you are an elite athlete and you're really overdoing exercise. Anything that results in excessive depletion of your body's resources and not enough rest time. Those can all lead to this depletion of this deeper blood level. And it's one of the ways that certain conditions like anxiety and depression can end up manifesting later. But this specific link I'm talking about in this video is the link between people who usually have lifelong poor digestion. That's often been their weak point, usually since childhood. And these people may have even just have a failure to thrive type, body type. They've always been underweight. They've always been a little cold. They've always been kind of that anemic looking kid, pale face and things like that. So what is the treatment approach for this kind of pattern? Right? There are a lot of reasons that anemia can show up. But one of them in this case is this digestive pattern, this spleen-chee deficiency pattern leading to later a blood deficiency pattern that we call it. And even though this is very, very, very textbook and it's a lot more complicated in reality, there are many ways you can treat it, but the foundation for me is usually focusing on the person's digestion. So I have other videos on treating that kind of syndrome, that complex of symptoms. But the big thing is, if you are suffering from this pattern, really, really, really hone in on your digestion being a focal point of your healing process. If you experience this trifecta, your digestion is going to be the thing you should be the most disciplined about in addition to rest. In order to heal that kind of pattern over the next months or the next years. So I hope that gives some insight as to treating this pattern. It's clinically very, very common. I've lived it myself and it can take some time to heal and recover. But I figured by showing this kind of trifecta, it may give a little bit more insight as to why this is happening. So if you guys like, there's that free guide below this video. Four daily rituals that can add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And in addition, if you'd like to become a patient of mine, down below this video, it has my local clinic info as well as information on becoming a telemedicine patient. So check it out below this video and before you go, I have two related videos on this topic.