First off, apologies about the delay, but thank you for sticking with us through all that. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Dr. Mark Condos, and I'm one of the co-directors of the Sir Michael Howard Center for the History of War, alongside doctors Jonathan Fennell and Christina Golter. And I'd just like to welcome you all to our evening, this evening, a talk this evening, with Professor Guillaume Piccadilly from Sciences Po in Paris. Professor Piccadilly is a specialist in the social and cultural history of the Second World War in France and Europe, and more broadly, the potentially long-term processes by which individuals transition from war to peace. His research examines the intersections between war resistance and post-war individual reconstruction with a particular interest in the history of emotions, sentiment, and intimacy. His most recent publication, Français Libre Pierre de Chevinier, was awarded the Prix Jean Santanet 2022 de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, as well as the Prix Philippe Vienné, Défense de la France 2022. His other publications include Les batailles des Ardennes from 2013, Résister les archives intimes des combattants de Londres from 2011, and Pierre Brosellette, Un héros de la Résistance from 1998. More recently, he's co-author and editor of numerous volumes, including Les compagnons de Loeb, Archives immidites des compagnons de la Libération, Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies from Civil Conflicts to Coalition Wars, and Français en Résistance, Carnet de Guerre, Correspondance, Journal Personnel. And finally, Retour à l'Intime aux sorties de la guerre. He's also a member of the Comité directaire de la Récheuse Historique de la Défense and a member of the Steering Committee of the Society for History of War. Without further ado, it's my great pleasure to turn it over to Professor Guillaume Piccadilly. This is when all the notes fall apart. Good evening. Thank you very much Marc for this introduction. You know, right now in Paris, the red front of mine is being awarded the Legion of Honor. And she invited me to the ceremony. I declined, of course, and added that at the very same time, in London, I would receive my own Legion of Honor. This is to tell you how privileged I feel to be here in the red hall. Privileged and ungrateful for those or to those who made this lecture possible. I'm going to be a Joe there and a Mark there to name but two. And by the way, if anyone here has any doubt about Marc's patience, I can testify it is infinite. But good news for you, Marc, this is the end of my few emails, you know, the series of my emails. I stand before you tonight as this evening as a humble craftsman. Handle, as I speak under the auspices of a great historian who proclaimed virtue alone invincible, a historian of whom I read a few books and whose legacies I've met in a way at Yale in Oxford. And in Oxford where I was lucky enough to work for eight blessed years. So rather humble, that's for sure. Handle also as I know that maybe in the audience here or online somewhere, there are specialists of sensitivities and of emotions. Handle too as I'm stepping into a delicate field using the language, the English language, a language that I love, of course, which is not my mother tongue and that makes things even more difficult. And also a craftsman, because I'm just a modest historian of the resistance and the rule-like phenomena, as Marc said. A modest historian trying to make the most of the history of sensitivities and the history of emotions. In other words, this lecture, the main steps of which you have just behind me on the screen will be a tentative and I'm afraid a rather impressionist reflection on the possible reinvestigation of a topic that I've spent a bit of time with for a few decades now. So first step, what is it all about? This isn't the tricky part.  First, of course, first of all, I'd like to tell you what we call resistance this evening. And you know, I will use the categories defined by French historian Pierre Labourry. Pierre, the late Pierre Labourry, said that for discriminating criteria where necessary, or the joint presence of for discriminating criteria was necessary to be sure that there was some kind of resistance phenomenon and you have these criteria there. This said, two paths were offered to those who wished to continue the fight in 1940 and later. The first path was that of the entire resistance, meaning people who decided to stay on the spot and to continue fighting with the means at hand. And the other path was the external resistance, meaning to leave the metropolitan territory in order to fight elsewhere and eventually, eventually, hopefully, to come back weapons in hand. And for long, for long, interior and external resistances have been regularly studied separately. As we shall see, sensitivities and emotions can be means to connect them, to connect the interior resistance and the external resistance. Since 1944, tens of thousands of articles and books have been written about the French resistance during World War II, written by former resistors and historians, written by French and non-French historians, all these people taking part in these grand enterprise. And thus my purpose tonight is to show you how much the history of sensitivities and of emotions can be useful to further research, to further enrich our knowledge of the resistance phenomenon in France during World War II. Even more now as the last fighters are gradually leaving us and dying, taking their intimate secrets, of course, and their personal memories to the grave. Despite its ancient intellectual roots, the history of sensitivities has long been the work of just a few pioneers. And after Alain Corbin, one of these pioneers and the giants, well, at least in my mind, the giant in the field, let's say that history of sensitivity, oops, you are killing my PowerPoint. Sorry, Guillaume, we're trying to mute it. No worries, take your time. So history of sensitivities. And after Corbin, these giants, let's say that it means what is written at the top of the screen to detect the configuration of what is experienced or and what cannot be experienced within a culture at a given time. In such a perspective, when wishing to detect these things, it's absolutely necessary to take into account as much as possible the five senses, the five senses as the thinking of the world, Corbin says in good English, une pensée du monde. Let's also consider that the sensitive includes the study of effects and of the sensory balance, the ways of apprehending time and space, the construction and mutations of relationships with the direct and more distant environments of societies. Simply put, very simply put, I name emotion, the physical and psychological reaction that can be triggered by a given situation. And there, a distinction must be made between historical emotions and psychological emotions. While the latter, the psychological emotions relate to a cognitive and biologically universal structure, historical emotions, sorry, I'm struggling because I'm cold. Yeah, historical emotions, sorry, are the results of learning how to express feelings in a community according to its cultural norms. Of course, as I wrote, middle of the screen, emotions can be considered as the collective and at the individual levels. We'll see a few examples in the next steps of the lecture. And all in all, the history of emotions, as you might know, became a field of research as the turn of the century. When under the influence of humanities and social sciences, it was considered that emotions are not only in history, but have a history, closely determined by cultural and social contexts. Here again, some pioneers have to be mentioned and with them some of the notions that's the deep put forward. First and foremost, Peter and Carol Stearns with the notion of emotionology. Then we are ready with the notion of emotives and that of emotional regime. So you have a quote, I'm not gonna read it. I hate people reading the quotes which are on the screen, so I won't do it. So ready invented and put forward that notion of emotional regime that is defined on the screen. And of course, with this idea of emotional regime, come these ideas of emotional objectives, emotional suffering, and emotional refuge. All emotions that we will meet again in the lecture. And the last big scholar that I want to mention is Barbara Rosenwein, who invented or decided to put forward the notion of emotional community, about which you have this small quote on the screen. All of this leads us to questions about sources and questions about pitfalls. In fact, the fluidity of our sensitive and emotional universe, the need to grasp it in its genealogical dimension, as much as in its very ordinary everydayness, leads us to a manner of history from below, which I will try to show you. And it requires us to use all kinds of sources, of which you have the main on the screen. All kinds of sources, you see a series of examples. That's nearly the very end of it, memoirs. And by the way, when thinking about this lecture and when thinking about memoirs that can be used to try to put forward emotions and sensitivity, an obvious example came to my mind. This one, you know, when you consider that book, the first part of it, the first half of it, which happens, which takes place in Britain, in North Africa, in Italy, before and during World War II, emotions and sensitivity everywhere, absolutely everywhere. So he, in a way, showed us the way. But the idea here is that we have to invent our sources in a very positive way. We have to invent our sources while being aware of the representativeness issue, of course, while being aware of a possible source effect, being aware of the difficulty of naming and waiting, being aware of the necessity to go beyond metaphors, to go beyond irony, to go beyond exaggeration and modesty, depending on the people who are writing or speaking or drawing. But, above all, as Alain Corbin uses to say, we must, I quote him, we must not refuse to hear anything, anything. All kinds of sources, did I say, and also various approaches, of which you have examples at the top of the slide. All in all, we historians trying to use sensitivities and emotions were from empirical reality as much as from very theoretical considerations. And we must be aware of a series of dangers of which the main are written, this time at the very bottom of the screen, and the biggest one being psychological anachronism. So, this was the tricky part, meaning the part about some kind of theoretical elements. The idea now is to try to show you how much the history of sensitivities and the history of emotions can offer a fresh look from below, as I said, at what's the commitment to the resistance and what's the fights that followed, that commitment actually represented on a daily basis for the people trying to survive the commitment and the fight. The commitments to the resistance in France took place, as I wrote, in three successive waves. The early days, then the years 1942 and 1943, and these two waves concerned both the interior and the external resistances. And then there was, there were the last times, 1944, the times of the big battalions. Of course, these big battalions popped up in metropolitan France, so that was much more for the interior resistance. Another quote taken from the diary of a pioneer of the French resistance in the southern zone, Charles de Rageau, that's him, Jean-Charles de Rageau, I published his diary. So that's a quote in his diary, 19 September 1940, when you see what he writes. And I like this quote because it takes us to the broad atmosphere of shame, the broad atmosphere of humiliation that ensued from the defeat, I should say the debacle, not the defeat, and that ensued from the political and moral renunciations of the summer, 1914. And furthermore, furthermore, the division, so that's Charles de Rageau, no, let's stay there with him, the division of France into various zones, as we know it, it's partial occupation, the installation of the Vichy regime, it's systematic, the systematic bleeding of France by the occupier, the fact that 1.8 million men were prisoners of war somewhere in Germany, meant only more a switch to a worrisome unknown, it meant a modification of the relationship to time, it meant also a substantial change in the social imaginary of the French people, a change in the imagined future, which leads us to history of emotions, which leads me to say that the pioneers had to, the first wave, had to extricate themselves from a gang of despair, of depression for some of them, and to categorically refuse the emotional regime of renunciation, of withdrawal, of self-mortification that Vichy was promoting in these two years, 1940 and 1941. In 1942 and 1943, due to the evolution of the world conflict and of the Vichy regime's policies, as well as in reaction to the policy of exclusion and persecution, designed both by Vichy and by the Nazis, a second wave, as I said, developed. And these commitments, the commitments of the second wave meant breaking with the emotional community that was still attached to Verdun and to its so-called Victor, Marshall-Petain, and more broadly, breaking with a law that was connected to the memory of World War I, a big emotional community. And that was tough. And when we read their testimonies, their diaries, their articles, and then their memoirs, we see how tough it was to break with that particular emotional community. On the contrary, the last wave, that of 1944, consisted in no break, but in a dive, in a dive into, as I wrote, the emotional community formed, created by the army of shadows in France, and more broadly, the emotional community of the liberation time. Let's go back to the first wave. So we have two photos, to which I'll refer in a few, in a minute. The idea is that men and women who decided to commit themselves to the resistance in the first wave, notably, but not only, had to, these people had to find their own way in times of collective, sensitive, and emotional distress, and dejection, in times of doubts and questioning. That means that each and every of them had to find himself or herself back, intellectually and emotionally speaking. Each and every of them has to, in his or her own way, had to make what I wrote as the title of the subpart, an inner journey towards what resistance fighter, Albon Vistel, named an intransigent no. And throughout this inner journey, towards the intransigent no, senses and emotions were once again put to the test. Just a tiny example. When resistance fighter, Jermaine, there is an E missing, Jermaine Ti Yong discovered Paris like this, and like this, Germanized Paris, she just vomited. That's the beginning of the summer 1940, and that was the beginning of her commitment to the fight in the resistance. Furthermore, the two resistance fighters had to face a series of impregnments and of acts of disobedience or even of defiance. They had to free themselves from the past, from their habits. They possibly had to leave a familiar environment. They had to distance themselves from social and I would say family circles. They had to disregard conventions. Sometimes they had to put loved ones at risk or at least in precarious situation. All of this created some painful moods and some painful qualms. To which was added, of course, the inevitably disturbing idea of taking a risk. And as I said, to put possibly loved ones at risk. So opting for resistance was a way of asserting one's identity in the midst of rapture. By relying on one's fortitude, by nurturing one's virtue of intransitions. As the core of such a journey, we historians can find a series of good reasons, such as the refusal of defeat and of armistice, the will to fight for honor, the hostility to the Vichy regime, obvious the rejection of the occupation of the policy of collaboration, some political and geopolitical motivations, hate for Nazism and fascism, that's obvious too. Or the will to simply do something. Some of the to be resistance fighters also referred to a family tradition. I insisted on this on the screen. A family tradition of refusal to submit. Others referred to some wet historical figures or to some past forms of collective resistance. And according to the testimonies left by these people, this approach to refer to a family tradition to historical figures, to past forms of collective resistance, this approach was a source of pride, emotion, positive emotion, and sometimes of exaltation and not inventing it's written in their diaries or private correspondences, et cetera, et cetera. Which leads me to the final remark of that second part. The idea, one question about the motives for their commitment. The resistance fighters usually put forward the couple reason, passion. Usually we historians insisted on the reason side. And I tend to think that's the passion side, notably in the early years, was maybe more important. But let's go to Britain a bit. And to the pre-French empire, of course. Because for lack of time, I will only consider the pre-French part of the external resistance. Of course, a much bigger picture should encompass, you know, French civilians in the UK and in the US, French agents within the SOE or within the MI6, et cetera, et cetera. But I will mainly focus on the pre-French. Pre-French people who were roughly 74,500, no more. People who assembled around the goal, or were injured or even killed when trying to join them, join him. And when reading what some of them brought during and or after the war, three series of observations can be made. The first series of observations consists in saying that these individuals, these to be pre-French, were prey to intense emotions when leaving and when jumping into the unknown. Intense emotions on their way to preference be it by boat, by plane sometimes, on foot via the Pyrenees, on horseback, from Lebanon and Syria, or through unlikely ways that like those who escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Germany, they went to the USSR, they were put into jail by the Soviets at the time, and then freed after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. So complicated ways and as a consequence, these to be pre-French faced regularly faced hope and doubt, excitement and discouragement, possibly fear and distress. Second short series of remarks, once the objective had been reached, be it in Britain or in the pre-French empire, these to be pre-French found themselves in the complicated emotional situation of refugees. Lastly, third series, luckily they also experienced the excitement of going on an adventure, adventure is a word which pops up regularly, the excitement of going on an adventure, the satisfaction of having surpassed the ordeal, and of course the pleasure of getting together with peers. Once settled in their new pre-French life, these people, these individuals quickly experienced emotions related to their situation as exiles. The obsession of the native soil, I'm quoting Joseph Cassell. An almost permanent anguish caused by the absence of news from relatives who still were in France, and for those who belonged to military units, you know the rather classic born of waiting, of the consciousness of passing time without any substantial change in the global situation, and with all this doubt again and brooding. And to face that situation, the pre-French resorted to various means, all of them rich in emotion, various means which became emotional refuges, you know that notion created by William Reddy. They endeavored to recognize themselves and to be recognized as pre-French, thanks to a uniform, but even more thanks to an attitude, sometimes a form of nonchalance. Of course, the fault in a way or another, but they regularly met in specific places there was a pre-French London at some point, you know, various places, very well known by the pre-French in which they could meet and of course talk about the motherland and talk about the fight, blah, blah, blah, in which they could experience the pleasure of brotherhood in pre-France. Some had, it has to be said, and it's obvious in their letters and diaries, a quite intense sentimental and love life. They reinvented their sentimental and love lives. They became attached to leaders. And, and this is where I wanted to go, they participated to specific events, military parades, awarding of medals, model economy of gratitude. Of course, and of course, participate in two specific meetings, such as the meetings of the French in that Britain, usually taking place there. So this is a photo, well, you see taken in mid-November, 1941. In this regard, to show you that I'm not speaking out of nothing, I want to share with you that quote, which is taken from a book written by Jean-Louis Crémi-Briac. Jean-Louis Crémi-Briac was a free French and eventually he became, he became a remarkable historian of pre-France. And this is what he wrote about the gold speech as the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 November, specific date on 11 November 1942. What I find striking in this text, short extract, written by a remarkable historian of pre-France who still was a witness of free French himself, what I find striking is the sensory formulation of the political and meta-religious experience that constitutes the spectacle of that particular meeting on 11 November, 1942. Although in so doing, the free French created an emotional community, of course, which gradually developed throughout the war, which further cemented the goldist enterprise and which extended its influence long after the war. And that emotional community was, of course, divided in sub-communities. Sub-communities, that of the people working in offices, and that of individuals accomplishing missions in the wider world or in clandestine in France, in metropolitan France, secret agents, people fighting on the battlefield, all of them creating a series of sub-communities. It also has to be said that the broad pre-French emotional community and the world to reach out to the French population and to the interior resistance via leaflets which were dropped over the country, via messages published in the clandestine press in France, and, of course, via BBC broadcasts, notably, again, intending to create a connection with the French population and with the interior resistance. This is another quote taken from a speech delivered by Pierre Bocellet, my PhD thesis topic. That was, that took place on 22 September 1942, and this is one of his most famous speeches intending to create that connection between Free France and the interior resistance and the French population in metropolitan France. Another quite telling example of these attempts of connections is given by the songs created in London and broadcasted at the BBC. The Partisan Slammance, written lyrics by Emmanuel d'Acier de la Vigerie, who was a pioneer and a leader of interior resistance and Annamarli composed the music, Le Chant des Partisans, Joseph Cassell, Maurice Drouon and Annamarli, and multiple traditional French songs such as at least this one. J'ai du bon tabard dans ma tabattière transformed into Il n'y a plus de tabard. Multiple traditional French songs with new lyrics, of course, new lyrics tightly connected to the situation of the time. Again, the idea was to create an emotional bond between the two sides of the so-called English channel. You can read, and thus I can drink a bit. For the life, the life and the fight within the ranks of what Joseph Cassell called sorry, the army of shadows gave birth to a very particular sensitive world and thus to multiple and various emotions. This is what's led a free French Shadbingen to describe in his last letter mid-April of 1944 to describe his action among the shadows within the army of shadows in France as, this is the title of the part, a heavenly period of hell. As a matter of fact, as I wrote, being an interior resistance fighter was not at all a smooth ride. And it was a ride, oops. You've seen that? We still have 40 minutes, yeah. Oh, just excellent. And the point is still here, you know? I'm a master, I knew that, a technical master. So it was not a smooth ride and I do not have the time to, of course, to address all aspects of that ride. And thus I will just focus on a few elements in which the history of sensitivities and the history of emotions can be, of course, can prove useful. As resistance fighter Raymond Obrac used to tell us with his tiny smile, you know, he said it was not written resistance on the door, you know, and of course, yeah, and he was right, of course. And if we think that's the first fighters within the interior resistance at the end of 1940 were only a few thousands. If we think that's at the end of 1942, there were only a few tens of thousands, nothing. The very fact of finding a connection was a connection to the underground world, to the clandestine world was rather complex and it was, of course, extremely dangerous. And thus fear and tension were present all along the process, the connecting process and relief, relief afterwards to which was quickly added the joy and the comfort of having found so brothers and sisters. And here the history of senses can prove very useful, you know, to reinvest the initial timing, very dangerous, and of course, tense steps to create that first connection and to be sure that it was a real connection to the real resistance and not a good connection to the Gestapo, you know. And the history of senses can also be very useful to study, as I wrote at the bottom of the screen, to study the real ballet of a clandestine meeting, you know, use of the senses to organize and then to launch the meeting, the rituals and the social techniques of communication within the meeting and then the senses used again when that's the very end of the discussion and everybody is trying to leave safely. A new sensory environment, but also silence and duality because resistance fighters quickly became, had to become masters of silence. And thus they entered their own kind of exile, an internal exile in their own country and most often, exile from their own relatives they experienced the situation of somebody living in his or her own house with his or her relatives, but being dual. Being dual, meaning living at the same time an official life and of course, a secret and quite dangerous one. And that leads us to what Pierre Laboury and him again will meet him a few times more. Pierre Laboury called the culture du double, can I say that?  And combined with the permanent improvisation and the doubts that accompanied the improvisation, combined with the danger, this culture of silence and of duality took a heavy toll on sensitivity and on the sensitivity and on the emotional life of the entire resistance fighters. So did the living conditions of the itinerant resistance fighters, moving from place to place without always being able to wash, to change clothes in the cold or the heat of course, and with a rather uncertain supply of food. And last but not least, I'll be back to it in a few minutes. Death was ubiquitous. Nevertheless, a kind of compensation came with the feeling of freedom with the fun, with the joy that came along with what Robert Gilday, this is from his book, called The Theatre of Resistance, meaning the sense of belonging to a fictional world, a world of changing identities, of changing places, as I said, of changing occupations, a world with its specific rights, this is from Robert's, rights and sacramental forms, a world of illusion and dissimulation and also a world of solidarity that was an enjoyable democracy without vote. Here I'm quoting Laurent Duzout, huge historian of the French resistance. A world which offered many emotional effuges and more broadly as for the free French, a heavenly, possibly heavenly emotional community. A world in which there were emotional sub-communities as well as for the free French. Emotional communities which could be composed of nationals, for example, Spaniards, who had gone to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War, stayed there and who then created their own organizations. Hence, maybe the need after Robert to speak about the resistance in France more than about the French resistance. Well, this is what he says and he might be right. But the history of sensitivities and the history of emotions make me thirsty, of course, make it possible and that's, I think, quite very interesting. Makes it possible to fully enter a field of study that has been too little considered so far. That's of the resistance fight, actual fight in prison and in prisons, sorry, and even in concentration camps. So I want to spend a few minutes on the plight of those, be they interior resistance fighters or member of the Free French Secret Services, those who ended up meeting in not very unviable fate at the hands of the enemy. Here again, we see the various categories of people fighting within or with the army of shadows come together in terms of shattered sensitivities and powerful emotions. I told you at the very beginning, you know, these sensitivity and emotion things are a good means to put all the points of resistance together. Fighters, indeed, but fighters without uniform, these people found themselves in an in-between position that exposed them to all types of repression. And it must said we know that nothing was spared when it came to spotting them, to tracking them down, to arresting them, and of course, to making them give up, what sometimes give up. And knowing that they were being pursued by an implacable, implacable enemy was a source of permanent tension and fear. A source of progressive wearing out and of exhaustion. As a matter of fact, many of them, many of the resistance fighters confided during and after the war, notably Daniel Cordier, Richard. Daniel Cordier, among others, explained after the war that he had felt having a limited credit for clandestine life. And as a matter of fact, when he was told Cordier coming back from France when he was in London, April 1944, and he was told that he had to go back to France and he said, no, my credit is out. If I go back, I'll be, I'm finished. I'll be caught by these thugs, so he did not go back. So a limited credit for clandestine life. And some managed to escape the hunt. Others were not so lucky. In metropolitan France, as you can see on the screen, the arrests affected between 25 and 40% of the clandestine fighters, depending on the organization. And a striking thing, we see that in their testimonies, a striking thing was is that once they had undergone the trauma of the enemy's eruption, a form of relief, a form of relief, momentarily overcame the dread of what was to come. Because, at last, the exhausting tension was over. I've selected two quotes, that one which is quite short, Claude Bourdais, who was arrested and then deported. He survived, well, you see, a kind of awful relief. And then the second quote from Edmond Michelin, another pioneer of the French resistance, arrested, deported, who also survived. So relief, even if they knew that some ugly things might be coming soon. Because, of course, for a huge majority of the resistance fighters who were arrested, the prison world was a strict, pure terror incognita. These men and women had no idea of what deprivation of freedom and lockup in a confined space, such as this one in Fren, the Fren prison, could mean in practice. So after the shock of the first discovery of the new environment in which they had to leave, they had to learn about the functioning of that environment, to learn about the functioning of the prison. Some faced absolute solitude of incommunicado detention, and with it, I'm quoting one of them, the distress and the misery of the known men or women. Most had to get used to the rhythms and to the obligations of a very particular collective life, in a small and confined space, often dirty and poorly lit, in dampness and cold, or, of course, on the contrary, in sweltering heat. They had to face a constant promiscuity with personalities whose presence was sometimes unbearable. A promiscuity, which, of course, puts their senses to trial on a daily basis, as showed by the example, the quote from her notes, her notes in prison, Bertrand d'Acier de la Vigerie. Well, you can read it, you can read it, and noticeably the part in bold that I've selected.  Moreover, of course, they had to face the anxiety before the very likely interrogations, the possible torture, all of this damaging their spirits and their morale. In order to hold on and to face the time that passed so slowly, they clung to their convictions, they tried to have this form of intellectual activity, of course, they clung to their faith if they had one. But all in all, well, no, sorry, they also tried to make their cell habitable. They paid attention to cleanliness, to their personal hygiene, to their physical condition. I'm not kidding, you know, it's, well, you can see that. It's a quote taken from the notes in prison written by Pierre Brosselet, big month before his suicide. But you see, you know, our 15 minutes of physical training, you know, not bad. So they tried to find ways, they formed new solidarity networks. And as we know, all this very often took them to firing squads, to mass executions, and to deportation to concentration camps. Which leads me to a few consideration about concentration camp, and much further. I'd like to make a stop on, I think, what is a very telling case study. And I need to drink, because it's a very telling case study. A very telling case study, which will also be a kind of exercise of micro history. You know, I told you various approaches, among which micro history. I told you about the sources, that's the very beginning, the sources that have to be invented by a historian, wishing to consider it, to consider, sorry, the resistance phenomenon through the lenses of sensitivities and of emotions. And sometimes, I'm sorry, and obviously, when considering prisons, when considering camps, and apart from post-war memoirs written by survivors, not so many sources do exist, but tiny pieces and scraps. Sometimes, though, the historian can get lucky. And as a matter of fact, one night of 2017, as I was working in my study in Abingdon, an email brought me a few photos of drawings made by a man, Camille de Letton, you have his name there, who was a French resistance fighter. He had been deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in mid-August, 1944, and then to a new commando, commando of a secondary camp of Buchenwald, named Hesht near Holson in Lowe Saxony. And there, from mid-September, 1944, to late March, 1945, de Letton created roughly 190 drawings, among which 150 portraits. Portraits and drawings that he then kept, whatever the risks, of course, attached, which came with the fact of keeping such things in such a place. Here are a few examples of drawings made by de Letton. So this is Underground Forced Labor, a dead inmate in a coffin, the graveyard of Holson, and you can't read, but he indicated who was buried where, in case the drawing would be found and would be used by the families of the people buried there. A known inmate, nobody knows who he was. And another kind of portrait, both of them died in the winter 1945. So a series of drawings made by de Letton just popped up on my computer in that night. A few considerations about what drawing meant in a concentration camp. I want to insist on the fact that I'm speaking about concentration and not extermination camps, which are another big topic. Concentration camps to which roughly 40,000 French resistance fighters were deported, 47% of whom died in the camp. And here, the historian of sensitivities and emotions steps into, I think, what is, I think, an exceptionally difficult territory as he or she faces an extremely specific universe. Where terror was organized and a universe of, I mean, largely extreme emotions. Drawings was a practice that did regularly exist, meaning that some people in many camps tried to draw things. Of course, it was not widely used, but it did exist in camps. It was a practice that had to do with journalism and testimony, a practice in which we can find some humor, it's amazing, and there's some positive emotions embedded in these drawings, even if the place had been ugly. A practice that I said, as I said, notably included portraits, meaning what I wrote, representations of what Emmanuel Levinas described much better than I will ever dare to do. These portraits were made from makeshift materials in tiny spaces of common humanity, tiny spaces of common humanity of emotional engagement that these deportees managed to create within the camp. Tiny spaces within which empathy and compassion, loyalty and solidarity were still alive even if around us that tiny space that was the camp. These portraits meant to exist against the negation of the human person that went with the system invented by the Nazis. They also meant to resist against what I wrote there, the invisibilization of the face, the invisibilization of the mirror of the soul imposed by the concentration camp system. One of the portraits that I received that night specifically caught my attention, a portrait to which I will now devote a few minutes. That portrait represents a resistance fighter, by the way, a leader of the resistance who's suddenly in the army of shadows was Martin Martin. That portrait was created rather early in the series created by Camille de Letton, created on 27 September 1944, meaning 13 days after the arrival in that new secondary camp, Hesht. And that portrait is not as dark and rough as most of the portraits created by de Letton. First, there are these words, you can't read them, but you know, at the bottom on the right, it's written, Très amicale souvenir du camp d'Echerhausen, just like a postcard, a postcard from a summer resort, you know, some kind of summer resort. And two questions, among others, can be asked when seeing this drawing. The first question is there, why an early portrait of Martin by de Letton? And here, of course, we reach sensitivity and sensitivities and emotions. The two men were roughly the same age. The narrator was born in 1886, Martin in 1888. They had fought during the Great War, Nurtébiète-Verdin, they had been wounded, both of them at Verdin, and they had had important responsibilities in the resistance. They had been arrested, brutally interrogated, and they had not spoken. They had been transferred to the friend prison, of which I showed you a little bit earlier. And then they had been deported by the last train to leave Paris, the train which left Paris on 15 August 1944 to Buchenwald. And that was a rather long trip, you know, four days and four nights, taking them from Portain, Paris, to Buchenwald. And the last part of the train was full of women, was taken two more days to go to Ravensburg. So they had experienced that trip, that four days and four nights trip.  All that had created between them a strong emotional bond, some strong ties of personal closeness. In other words, the portrait represents, I think, a powerful friendship. And even more, it represents a fraternity between the two men. And then the second question, why such a portrait? Because what the drawing makes, it's to make visible a man's face and to make invisible, as much as possible, the impact of concentration camp internments. The face, if we go back to the portraits, the face is quite very precisely described. While the end of the service number, you see it's there on the chest, the end of the service number disappears in the folds of the stripped uniform. And here I'll have to thank Agat Dora, who helped me decipher that particular portrait. She's here tonight. We see a finely drawn profile. We see a cap and a scarf to keep warm. We see some color. Can you imagine what it took to find color, to find something to put color on the cheeks? Some color to make one looks good. We see the tiny beginning of a smile. We see a pensive and enigmatic look, which refers to the very existence of a being. In other words, we see fatigue, but not exhaustion. We see weight loss, but not too pronounced. We see the beginning of physical wear and tear. Certainly, but neither injury, neither injury. I'm here, nor marked suffering. Much care, therefore, given to what might be one's last image. A picture that becomes, at this point, a message of life, of love and comfort, in case the worst happens, left for those who will survive. Even more interesting, and the other portraits are even more interesting, because the little drawings also lead the historian to a paroxysm of violence, and there's two shattered sensitivities and extreme emotions. Paroxysm understood here as an experience that produces fear or silence, total, complete silence. In the early afternoon of 15 April 1945, so you can see Hesht, it's there. You have Hesht just above me, and then Dorouta, cellar, and Bergen-Belsen. That's the trip that I'm gonna try to summarize briefly with a lovely step, every step in cellar. So in the early afternoon of 5 April, the 380 survivors of Hesht set off on foot to the Escherhausen railway station near Halsen, and that was the beginning of what would become their death march. On 6 April, at the end of the day, in Dorouta, second step, in room number two, Dorouta, they met up with other deputies, bringing the total number of prisoners to around 3,400. For the survivors of Hesht, leaving their camp, one, and then finding themselves in that big, big number of prisoners meant a loss of bearings. It meant additional disorientation. On the afternoon of 7 April, all the prisoners were loaded onto a train consisting of 50 to 55 open wagons. 3,400 people, 50 to 55 wagons. I can tell you that they were crammed into these wagons. At around 4 p.m. on 8 April, the day after, the convoy arrived at number three, cellar, a little town, and there the train stopped next to an ammunition train. Two hours later, while all the deputies were still locked in the train, a squadron of bombers from the 9th US Air Force bombed the station, three waves. According to estimates, 400 to 500 deputies died in the explosions, or in the fire that followed the explosions. The rest ran for their life into the town of cellar or to a wooded area west of the railway line. And this is when the 150 drawings that Doletons still had within were lost, you know, in the hell, in the explosions and in the fire. And that was another terrible blow inflicted on Doletons. And then from the evening of 8 April to the early afternoon of 9 April, soldiers, policemen and residents of cellar organized and carried out what is still known today as the hare hunt, I'm not kidding, that's the name of it, or the rabbit hunt of cellar, during which, as you see, 500 to 700 deputies were slaughtered, were killed with rifles, guns, or knives. At the end of the day on 9 April, between 2000 and 2500 prisoners began to march towards Bergen-Belsen, 26 kilometers. And that was another nightmarish experience, of course, under the usual conditions of death marches. In the early morning of 11 April, they arrived there, Bergen-Belsen. That's also Bergen-Belsen, you know, kind of different, that kind of picture from the portraits I showed you. All in all, for the survivors of Hesht Secundary Camp, and I must say for the inhabitants of cellar, all this meant days and nights of paroxysm that notably ended in deep silence. Last step, very quick ones, not last, nearly last step. A few words about leaving the resistance. You know, the allusion to post-war silence that I made leads me to a topic to which I've, and Mark said it, at the beginning of, well, in his introduction, a topic to which I've devoted a certain number of books, or at least of studies and articles, the coming out of war processes. It's a fascinating topic, but I don't have time to develop. I just want to say that I'm speaking about the experience lived over a variable time period, individually and collectively, by people as a result of a conflict in which they have fought, or a conflict they have been subjected to, or a conflict they have, and or a conflict they have suffered from. It's a process, the coming out of war process that begins, we know that, before the, much before sometimes, the official ending of the conflict, and which can last long, last for a very long time, even sometimes until the death of the given individual. It's a process at the core of which a series of subtopics, such as the ones which are indicated on the slide, a series of lovely topics are just waiting for historians, so if you want to volunteer, do step in, of course. Naturally, resistance fighters, be they free French or members of the Army of Shadows, were concerned by these issues. Issues that can be, in that case, the case of the resistance divided into two categories, issues which popped up in the liberation time, and then long-term ones. First, liberation time. To briefly evoke the sensory and emotional situation of resistance fighters and free French in Liberator France, I'd like to address three topics very briefly. First one, the motherlands at last. The idea here is to consider some veterans of free France when they rediscovered the motherlands. We have a photo there, three men, François Chaudron-Courcel, Pierre de Chfignier, François Coulet, all of them free French veterans. The photo was taken on 14 June 1944. They were on board the torpedo boat La Combatante, and the thing they are looking at so keenly is the coast of France, of course, the coast of France taking shape in the distance. They seem to be focusing very much, and there might be some kind of passion or emotion on the agenda. As a matter of fact, and I love that quote, sorry Robert, you already had it at least twice, but I like to use it in England and Britain, I'm very sorry. So the concrete meaning with the land of France was of the same passionate nature as the one we saw on the photograph. This is the very beginning of Pierre Bourdon's, veteran of external resistance, the very beginning of his notes when he landed, when he arrived in France within the second French armoured division. You know, quite very positive, and I think that it's kind of a perfect quote to show how the senses can be impacted and how all of these can be described by somebody who experienced the actual situation. I nevertheless must tell you that not everything was so positive as what he writes because the reunion with many compatriots was troubled by a clash of moral economies of suffering, and the reunion with interior resistance fighters was impacted by a discrepancy of emotional communities. You know, the emotional community of the free French and the emotional community of the interior resistance fighters. And of course, there were legitimacy issues underlying the rest of it. Second, brief topic, the return to intimate life. We historians of the war-like phenomenon know that to return to intimate life at the end of a conflict means destroying one's identity as a fighter and rebuilding one's identity as a civilian. It's not an easy process and it can become even more difficult when the timing adds to the confusion. Let's go back to the example that I gave you, Commander Martin, Martin. You know, on April 8th, he was a hunted hare. On April 27th, he was at home in Paris less than three weeks. In the middle of which, the death march, Bergen-Belsen, sickness, et cetera, et cetera. Three weeks, it's just confusion, you know? And those senses, sensitivity, emotions, of course, at stake. And of course, returning to intimate life also meant redefining one's way of being at intimate level, reuniting with relatives who are no longer as close as they were in the past, reconnecting with each other's bodies. To stay with the case of former deportees, there are many testimonies from relatives who were just horrified by what's they discovered, you know? And their reactions, their horrified reactions added to the survivor's distress, of course, emotions everywhere. Celebrate, so this example of, this is Hotel Lutessia in Paris, Survivors of the Camps. Last topic, celebration. And the big question, to celebrate or not, I will limit myself here to one example. The example of Gilbert Brosselet, so whose husband, Pierre, had died in, well, he had died in dreadful conditions, tortured and then committing suicide, as I said, on 22 March, 1944. And when working on my PhD, I met her many times and she once told me that she got drunk once in her life on 18 June, 1945, meaning the day on which the victory was officially celebrated in France for the first time, 18 June, 1945. And she got drunk because she could not bear it. That was not possible. So here we have an individual emotional condition that's of Gilbert Brosselet, totally at odds with the emotional regime implemented by the provisional government of the French Republic, you know? And also totally at odds with the broad emotional community of liberated and, I put many quotes, victorious France, not so victorious, but still officially at least. So she was at odds and she got drunk, you know, she could not take it. In the long term, coming out of resistance, went along with all these things to which we might want to be back if you have a few questions, a few questions at the very end, but I will not develop, I do not have time to develop, I'd skip. So a few concluding remarks. The first series of concluding remarks, brief ones, will be about the situation of the historian. Because I think that one last issue needs, this issue, situation of the historian needs to be addressed when that particular historian is working on the resistance phenomenon. And even more when he or she tries to deal with resistance fighters, sensitivities, and emotions. In 1994, Pierre Laboris came again, he talked about him, Richard, you know, I was warming up this afternoon before coming into the great home. Pierre Laboris in 1994 notably insisted on three elements. The idea that the history of the resistance remains, I quote him, a field for ideological maneuver. And then another quote from him, the idea, second elements, the resistance is neither a dead idea nor a dried up relic, and it remains a moral fact. And then the third element on which he insisted was that for a long veterans of the resistance considered and kept saying that we historians who have not experienced their fight could not really understand it. Hence the idea, hence the fact that Pierre Laboris said that we historians of the French resistance are historians under close scrutiny, useless to say that trying to reach the resistance fighters, sensitivities, and emotions puts us on a possible even weaker spot. The second element on which I want to insist is that concerning the situation of the historian is that we have to consider the fact of looking as the very features of the resistance phenomenon puts the historian's sensitivity and his or her emotions at stake. Because it is impossible to, obviously, it's impossible to study that particular topic with a detachment impervious to emotion or any trace of passion. And furthermore, we historians cannot avoid feeling emotions when facing witnesses, facing particular archives, facing particular locations, and of course, when considering some particular topics such as concentration camps, for example, or prisons. So we feel these emotions. Our sensitivity is at stake. It's a natural phenomenon. And in fact, I think that it's a phenomenon that helps us get deeper into the archives, into the given source, into the place, into the location. And of course, we have antidotes in order to remain true scientists, even if our sensitivity and our emotions are triggered. Furthermore, there might be some possible connections. It can happen that a given historian has in a way or another a personal connection to the resistance, to some people who at some point had where resistance fighters. And this is what we know in history. The I issue, you know, for long it was said that it was, well, the I was to be expelled from social sciences as it introduced very negative. Well, it introduced subjectivity, which was a very negative factor. Then we know that the I became more than tolerated, but had to be kept nevertheless at a certain distance. I, I'm not the only one, tend to consider that a historian in fact is driven, even in his historiographical and academic choices by what's free French and Nobel Prize François Jacob called his or her email statue, last statue, interior, huge book that everybody who reads French here should read at some point. As Yvon Jabonka, another great historian explains, the I of method, I'm quoting him, the I of method, a subjectivity objectified in a text makes it possible to highlight the necessity of a vital investigation, to highlight the coherence of an approach, to highlight the architecture of a reasoning. And of course, hence some fascinating text research, texts research, such as the ones written by Yvon Jabonka or François Maspero or the, in my opinion at least, the Philip Sons with his tremendous east, west street, remarkable text research. To finally conclude that lecture, I would like to share with you two last quotes. They are taken from a letter written by a pioneer of the French resistance who became one of the main leaders of the French interior resistance, Henri Frenet, a letter that he wrote in 1950. Well, you can read these two quotes. And I would say that, yes indeed, one must be cautious when stepping into the sensitive and emotional world, the secret garden, as he writes, are those who chose to fight for the liberation of France during World War II. I nevertheless hope that I managed to convince you of how useful it can be to consider the sensitivity, to consider the emotions of these fighters in order to complement existing studies about the commitment and the combat of resistance fighters in order to enter the prisons and the concentration camps when we are lucky enough to find things popping up or to find things. And of course to investigate the coming out of resistance processes. Individuals of flesh and blood, that's the second quote, the resistance fighters shared a rich and intense sensitivity, sorry, and emotional identity which participated in the development of very lively memories, just as if they were carrying with them, an invisible cathedral, this is taken from the memoirs of one of them, an invisible cathedral which formed the core of their identity as resistance fighter. Clearly, this I think contributed powerfully to the way in which for decades and still today the resistance has been and remains celebrated in France. Before ending for good, I'd like to dedicate this lecture to my late and beloved dad and to his own dad, my grandfather, to men who still continue to inspire me. Thank you very much.


Dear students, in this topic we shall discuss two important learning behaviors that is habituation and imprinting. The learning behaviors are those which are variable with experience. Habituation and imprinting are two important learning behaviors. Habituation is the simplest form of learning. An animal learns to ignore a repeated or irrelevant stimulus. We define habituation as a loss of responsiveness to the stimuli that convey little or no new information. Let us take a few examples of habituation. Many mammals and birds recognize alarm calls of members of their own species. However, if alarm calls do not respond to a member of a species, then in such a situation this member's alarm calls do not respond. Common language is a cry wolf effect or a share aya share aya, which is the behavior and then animals of the species stop responding to such calls. Another example of habituation is in squirrels, which give a signal when a squirrel gives a signal when it is threatened. Other members of the species recognize that signal and go to a nearby refuge. However, an individual who gives fake calls is also recognized by the members of population or essay member's calls are ignored. Here students, habituation is a very significant phenomenon because habituation causes the conservation of energy and time, which saves the process of habituation on an unimportant stimuli. Energy and time are better spent on other important functions. Imprinting is another form of learning behavior, which is defined as the formation of a long lasting behavioral attachment to a particular individual or object at a specific stage in life. Imprinting is also a type of learning behavior during which a very young animal develops attachment with the very first object that it has visual, auditory or tactile experience. This experience can be gained and this attachment can be developed and that young one follows that object forever. Dear students, Imprinting is a specific, sensitive or critical period. Imprinting can only be developed during this time. This time is a limited developmental phase for certain learning behaviors. During this time, young imprint on their parents to learn the basic behaviors of the species. Youngs also learn to recognize their offspring. A good example of imprinting is observed in seagulls. Seagulls are only one or two days of a sensitive period for a parent to bond with their youngs. If they do not bond in one or two days, the parent will not care for its infant, which will lead to the death of the offspring. Dear students, a classic experiment, a behavioral scientist, Conard Lawrence, had done this on geese and from there he discovered the phenomenon of imprinting. Conard Lawrence had imprinted the gooselings with himself and left his imprint on them. This is how the geese were born. Conard Lawrence first saw them and he started following them. After that, the gooselings followed him and he was the mother of the gooselings. This experiment of Conard Lawrence resulted in the discovery and interpretation of the phenomenon of imprinting.


Good morning, everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, coming to you live from TFNN headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. 9 a.m. Eastern time Thursday morning, 30 minutes into the trading day, and we got markets barely starting off to the downside right now. Dow futures, negative 49 points, trading 27,712. S&P, negative by seven, trading at 3,088. NASDAQ futures, negative by 22 points, trading at 8,243. Oil catching a little bit of a bit, up 42 cents at 57,54. Ten-year yield backing off a bit at 1.83%. And the gold contract right now, up $6.1469. This morning, we're going to get natural gas inventories at 10.30. We're going to get crude inventories at 11 a.m. That pushed back one day because of the Monday Veterans Day federal holiday. Start things off. We'll start it off with the VIX this morning. Quite a day yesterday, finishing to strength. Today, 1335 in that volatility index. We'll jump over the charts. We'll start things off. Yesterday, of course, a little bit of trade worries in the middle of the day, but the market shook it off in a big way. We made it all the way up last night to a high of 27,803. Off of that level by a bit, 27,719 right now in the Dow. You back things up to yesterday's market action. We saw a little bit of volatility in the middle of the day. And there is your sell-off on the potential trade tariff news that China may be barking at the deal in terms of putting a numerical number on what kind of agricultural soybeans they will be buying. But as I said, market shook it off by the time you finish. We're back up to the session highs. NASDAQ 100, 82.44 right now. Overnight, we're as high as about 82.84. S&P 500, currently trading at 3,089. Crude oil, as I mentioned, we get the numbers recruited about two hours from right now, 11 a.m. Eastern time. We'll find out the EIA inventories. Crude trading $57.64. There's your gold contract, 14.68. Trading higher from most of the overnight session. Gold reached a high at about 4 a.m. of 14.71, just a couple of dollars above where we're at right now. And the euro-US dollar trading just under 110.10998. In terms of what else you have happening out there, continuing trade news, China's Commerce Ministry says trade wars should be ended by removing tariffs. Not sure if President Trump will be up for that. And Walmart, with their earnings last night, beating, guiding up on their forecast, quite an acceleration to higher territory this morning, but backing off a bit. We have their earnings, we have their earnings call up to 125.69, now at 123.39. Stay tuned, folks. Larry Pezzavento coming up with trade, what you see right now. We'll be right back.


Hello and welcome everyone to E4M Talk Show. Our guest today is Raja Rajamanar, the Chief Marketing and Communication Officer of Mastercard. The brand surprised everyone recently by announcing a sponsorship deal with the BCCI for international and domestic tournaments played in India. Welcome to the show Mr. Rajamanar and congratulations. Thank you so very much. Really appreciate having me here. Mr. Rajamanar, you replaced Patreon to become the title sponsor for international matches and domestic matches held by BCCI in India. Why did you choose Cricket sponsorship and why now? So, Cricket is the second largest sport in the world in terms of fan following after soccer and our strategy is to really go behind sports and areas where people are really passionate about and curate and create experiences that are truly priceless for our customers and for our consumers. So, we actually call this as the experiential marketing strategy and since 2013 when I took over at Mastercard as the Chief Marketing Officer, we pivoted our strategy away from an advertising-led marketing strategy to an experiences-led marketing strategy and what this means is we identify areas where people are truly passionate about. We've got 10 areas like sports, music, films and we've got philanthropy, sustainability environment and we've got fashion, arts and culture and so on. So, we've got 10 health and well-being and so on. So, in each of these areas, we started acquiring assets for sponsorship and where we negotiate with our partners in a way that we are able to curate experiences for our customers and consumers that money cannot buy but you can get them through Mastercard. So, this has been the whole premise and since then we have been going very strongly like for example, in the world of sports, sports is an ocean. It's not just one single area. So, for example, golf, we are one of the largest sponsors of golf tournaments around the world and golf ambassadors we have. Tennis, for example, we sponsor the French Open Tennis and the Australian Open Tennis, we've got a number of ambassadors and so on. So, when you look at soccer, which is one of our largest areas of sponsorship and which are the world's most following. So, we have UFO Champions League, Copa Libertadores, Copa America and we've got brand ambassadors like Leo Messi and we sponsored a number of women's soccer teams around the world. So, like that, when we look at the entire space cricket is something which we have been looking at and studying for a little while and we are fortunate that this opportunity came along to associate ourselves with BCCI and get into the sponsorship and as I said, it's like second largest in terms of fan following and in India, you know, I have grown up in India and Hyderabad and while I was growing up, we used to play a lot of cricket in our streets and we know how passionate we were all about and in those days, there was no television either. So, it was already a commentary and we would be totally engrossed and what's delightful to see is that spirit and the passion continues till date as far as cricket is concerned. So, we said here's something which will be making us a lot of sense to get involved in and we feel very blessed that we had had this opportunity to sponsor the tour events. So, may I ask what are your short-term and larger objectives, you know, in India with this partnership? So, first and foremost, what we want to do is to really make MasterCard a beloved brand. So, we want a brand which people have affinity for, they like the brand and what we find time and again is when you get involved yourself in an authentic fashion in an area that people are passionate about, they start liking you. And that's an important thing, you know, we call it brand love and brand affection. These drive consumer choices and consumers' preferences towards the brand as things progress. So, that's something which we feel is very important for us and India is obviously one of our most, I would say, high priority countries and the potential is incredible. If you look at many other countries across the world, there might be today much bigger than India in terms of the revenues that various companies make. But India's population is very young, which means that the future of the world is in a place like India and no brand or no company can afford to ignore India. So, it was the combination of India being our priority market with high potential and cricket being a passion area in India. Like no other categories, probably, and I keep saying in India, there are three main religions, cricket, Bollywood and music. So, this is an opportunity for us to get involved with those kinds of levels of passion and therefore we have gone with that. And the idea is hopefully the brand will start becoming stronger in the country. It will be more endearing to consumers. And it's not just a payments brand or a payments enabler, but some brand that enables and curates priceless opportunities and priceless connections for you. In fact, our brand's statement, we say, is connecting everyone to priceless possibilities. And that's what will strive in India as well. So, how much ROI you are expecting from this collaboration, especially since it is just for six, seven months? Right. So, we have to obviously take what is available. And so the period that you have listed is correct. That's a period for the contract that we have got. And the way we look at our ROI is at three different levels. So, one is, is it enhancing our brand in a measurable way? And does it have therefore downstream effects on our business? Number two, is it driving business for today and for tomorrow? And number three, is it giving us a competitive advantage in the marketplace? So, these are the three dimensions. Now, in a relatively short period of time, it is the number one and number two, which actually are more measurable in a quantified fashion. And our ROI is that we are projecting at this point in time. We don't have any returns yet. We haven't even started our activations in India. So, whatever ROIs we are projecting in India, they're pretty positive and comparable to some of the best assets that we have around the world. How are you going to measure the ROI? Because I think the tournaments are a spread on domestic, international matches. So, how are you going to calculate the ROI? See, I have been, firstly, I'm a chemical engineer by training and I went to Sumania University in Hyderabad. And then to I am Bangalore, where I pursued a lot of quantitative subjects and also my grounding in finance, etc., has been with Citibank for 15 years. I worked there. So, one of the first things that we try to do is to quantify things and measure. Now, measuring ROI is not very easy, but it is something which is an art and a science that you actually evolve and develop, which we have been doing over the last several years. We have even acquired a number of data analytics companies around the world and they are actually focusing and we have got a ton of proprietary methodologies by which we actually measure our ROI and based on the returns, we're able to make our choices and optimize our investments appropriately. So, this is the major thing. We have our own secret sauce, so to speak. The other interesting thing is, you know, for unlike many other brands and many other categories of products and companies which are out there, for us, we have one significant advantage is that we can see data in a highly, in a totally anonymized fashion and in an aggregated fashion in real time. So, we don't know who is actually spending what amount where, but we know how much money is getting spent in where and we are able to sort of identify very clearly, okay? Take a simple example. If you take, say there is one city in which there is a tournament happening and another city which is very comparable to it where there is no tournament happening. Now, if my transaction numbers go up, if my volumes are going up in one particular place where there is tournament happening, but not other and there doesn't seem to be any other cause that is very evident than the fact that we are doing something in the first market, that is a reasonable indication for us. You know, we call it AB testing or it's a test and control. So, we do these kind of things, but I have oversimplified just for the audience to not get drawn down into the weeds. But the point is that we have got very sophisticated and cutting edge technologies to measure our ROIs and as for any other investment that we do, we will also keep monitoring our ROI for this investment as well. Yes, thank you for explaining the process. We would also like to know what are your marketing plans around this deal and how do you plan to activate the deal with the BCCI? So, basically a couple of things. You know, when we enter into any sponsorship, we have broad agreement on the areas for activation with our sponsorships partner in this case, BCCI. Now, we are in the process of doing brainstorming sessions and with the local team is actually the one who is taking obviously the total lead on this and they are the ones who have got a ton of ideas and will bring them to life pretty quickly and all this is happening in real time as we speak and you will see a ton of action on the marketplace hopefully pretty soon. We would love to cover all those things and what touch points you are looking at with this deal? Whenever we look at any deal, it is a 360 degree, highly integrated and a wholesome campaign of activations. It's not just, you know, we say, okay, let's do on the promotions or let's do on the television or let's do on the media or outdoor or perimeter boards in the stadiums, etc. We have got a holistic set of what you call touch points that we really focus on and as I said, the team is again going into each one of these because we have finite investments and we have to choose which areas we are going to invest in and which is the one which is likely to give us or move us more towards accomplishment of our objectives that we have set up for ourselves and based on that they will come. So, but right now, it's a tad premature to say these are the touch points specifically that we are using. We got a very broad idea but the key thing is now it is a question of bringing them to life with a lot of creativity and out of the box thinking and a lot of innovation behind it. So, as you earlier mentioned that cricket is, you know, religion in India and you have been sponsoring other sports events such as Delhi World Club Open. You signed Shukapur and Anirva Lagiri as brand investors and golf is entirely different game altogether. So, what is your strategy behind supporting Indian golf which has very few audience and very niche audience? Yeah, so, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, there is this saying which says different strokes for different folks, right? We cannot have one single broad brush and hope to reach every segment in the marketplace with a broad brush. So, we need mass appeal on one level. That's what gives us the scale but we also need to understand what are the other niches or other smaller sports or smaller areas that are available which will really give us a tremendous amount of brand advantage in those spaces. Now, as far as India is concerned, in addition to golf, we also party to Batman, right? We are supporting four players at this point in time. So, what we try to do is to look at what are consumers passionate about. When you look at the entire mass of consumers, we segment them and for each segment, we try to look at what are they passionate about. When you look at cricket, it cuts across the entire spectrum of audiences. But when you look at golf in a country like India, it's a little bit more focused on the more affluent segments, so to speak, right? Which is also an important segment that we go after. And then we also have got somebody like Batman, which is not exactly an affluent segment kind of a following, but it is something which is very topical. So, recently, for example, when Indian Batman has done very well in Asia, suddenly there is a lot of attention and focus in that space. So, which is a terrific opportunity for us to be able to get into that sport around that occasion and really get good, what do you call, support that's given to some players that we thought was going to be very helpful. And we think it's going to be very helpful for our brand. And so that's what we are going about in terms of our portfolio management. So, if you look at it like even just in the world of sport globally, and we are taking examples of what we are learning in various countries and we do success transfer across different countries. Now, we are in Donf and we are one of the largest sponsors of Donf. We are in football, which is soccer with UFA champions, Likopali, Butterdores and all these things. And Leo Messi is our brand ambassador, he is world's number one. Then we are in Tunis with French open Tunis, Austrian open Tunis and a bunch of ambassadors. We are into skiing. So, we sponsored the kids pool tournament in Austria. We are into what do you call ice hockey. We are sponsored the Maple Leafs in Canada, for example. So, it's a very wide spectrum and we try to identify the segments that we are really trying to connect with and see how we can up our image, how we can make our image very relevant and how can we help consumers connect with our brand and how can we connect with the consumers by curating these experiences and so on. So, that's what we are not focused on. It's not a one-trick only, but we are really approaching it as a portfolio strategy. Now, the question comes in mind, how sports sponsorships, which is a spread across the sports, fit into your larger plans for brand building and growth within India? Right. So, like I mentioned, there are two things. Firstly, we have got this experiential marketing strategy, which is one very big one. The second one is what we call as passion points. And we have moved away from the traditional segmentation methodologies and moved into what we call as passion-based segments. So, in passion-based segments, we say if I have got these several hundred million people who are there, what are they passionate about? Like I just mentioned before, in India, for example, music is a big passion more than many other countries actually. Cricket is, of course, and then you have got Bollywood or Cinema in total. Now, Bollywood is there. It's very national. But also, if you look at, for example, in the South, the telecom movie industry is a huge one. And that's where I have been sort of brought up on a diet of these movies, literally watching every single week. Now, these are the areas which people, if they're connecting with, we go into those passion points. The idea is, if you do something meaningful and authentic in an area that people deeply care about, which is what we call passion, the brand ratings will go up. The brand perceptions will go up. The right and the relevant attributes of the brand will become stronger.  Now, just look at this way. So, if you measure the brand strength and the brand rankings of MasterCard, a few years back when we started this whole strategy, we were at number 87. I still inherited a top 100 brand in the world. Today, we are at number 12. And this is, we are punching way above our weight. And we are beating not just brands in our category, but brands across everywhere, across categories of industries and companies, et cetera, who are not even in competition with us. Because at the end of the day, when you're getting into brand positioning, you are trying to occupy a space in consumers' minds and in their hearts. And consumers are not segmenting and compartmentalizing their mind and heart by product category or by service category. So it's basically one space in which you have to cut through the clutter, stand out and stand for something meaningful from a consumer's point of view. So that way, when we are getting into something like cricket or something like sports or cinemas, we are trying to connect with consumers through their passion and by curating and creating experiences in a meaningful manner. And we call this priceless experiences. And that strategy has paid us off very, very well, at least in the last nine, 10 years that I have been here. True. So now a question comes in mind, are sportsperson far more convincing and trustworthy compared to other celebrities such as film stars when it comes to promoting financial products? So here is the thing. Firstly, it's fascinating when you look at consumer psychology. If you are having a consumer connect with a particular brand in a particular category, what should you look at and say, does the consumer have credibility in this particular category or in this particular personality, as far as that category is concerned? Now you would think, for example, if you have a movie star endorsing a financial services product, it may not work. No, but consumers are not trusting an individual only the context of that particular category, but they trust the person. Is this a trustworthy person? Is this a person whose recommendations I want to follow? It doesn't matter whether the person is what you call endorsing a two-wheeler or endorsing a financial services product or endorsing a soft drink. The point is, is that individual, the ambassador or the sportsperson, whoever it is, credible? Is that person somebody who I as a fan would like to follow, would like to take the advice of, would like to be guided by? So this is one very interesting aspect. Like for example, we have seen, no, we have been associated with movie stars quite a lot, which is, we had for example, Hugh Jackman, the Australian movie star, and it was one of the most successful campaigns that we had run with him. He's not a financial services expert, he's not a payments expert, but he's a trusted authority. At that time, we had the evaluation, etc. So from those perspectives, it is not, if you're a sports person, you're applicable only in these limited areas or these specific areas. Yes, there is a multiplier effect that happens. So if I'm a sportsperson and I'm endorsing sportswear or cricket, I'm endorsing a particular brand of what you call bats, cricket bats or ball or whatever it is. If I'm saying there is immediate connection and much more impact and that's what is we call it the force multiplier. But at a base level, are you believing this person to have reason to believe? Do you believe him or her? And if you do, doesn't matter what they talk about, they said they talk about diet, you believe. If they talk about saying that, hey, this is something which you should have this learning program for some educational stuff, you believe. So it is a fascinating thing and not as clean, cut and compartmentalized as we would like to believe it is. I ask this question because most of the brand ambassadors in India, I mean, your brand ambassadors in India are sportsperson like MS Dhoni and Anirvan Lahidi or the four badminton players, right? So that's the question. I have not seen any Indian actor as a brand ambassador of MasterCard in India. No, we in fact had, for example, we had Anil Kapoor, we had Sonam Kapoor and we had Irfan Khan. So we did have the movie actors as our brand ambassadors too. Okay, so are you going to sign more? The hope is that I'll have unlimited budget to follow my passionate sponsor. Everyone that I would like to, but the point is we have to make our priorities and the three areas that I outlined in are obviously going to be areas of focus for us to connect with consumers, which is music, which is movies and which is cricket or sport more broadly. So these are the three areas you will see us and this just hopefully the beginning and we are very optimistic about India's future and our opportunities as a company in India. And therefore, we'll go all out to realize those opportunities in the best possible manner. And therefore, you should actually expect action into the future, at least in these three areas if not more. So do you have any plans to support Indian football as well? This is the point, which is are we supporting football? Absolutely, yes. Are we supporting every football around the world? No. And are we prioritizing? Yes. So as I said, we are not blessed with infinite pool of funds. So with the available funds, what you try to do is to prioritize. Now, if there is an opportunity that is having a very high ROI, there is no reason why we cannot do something with Indian football as well. So first, we are open to all possibilities. We are constantly evaluating them. And when there is an opportunity, we'll absolutely take a look at it. But right now, we don't have a plan to say, yes, we are getting into football or we are getting into company or we are getting into some other sport. So it is a very thoughtful approach with finite funds. So Indian sports has emerged as a big ad revenue generator and experts say that sports ad revenue in India is currently one billion dollar, which can go up to three billion in the next five years. What is your prediction? You know, particularly after the pandemic, there has been a tremendous amount of positive movement for live events. And so when live events have started happening again, people are going back with the vengeance to these events. Number two, for various sports organizers, they have actually lost a lot of what they could have during those two years. And they are trying to be very thoughtful about how to bring their sport back to the levels that they were pre-pandemic. So that's number two. And number three, there is a ton of focus in terms of with work now becoming a little more hybrid. People are also reallocating their time and they're also dedicating more number of hours watching live sports, whether it is on television or on streaming channels. So when the audience viewership numbers are very attractive, that immediately becomes a magnet for advertisers, because all the people are sitting there and it's the right context. So as an advertiser, you want to reach those people so you are doing your advertising on in those channels on those specific occasions. So therefore, I see that this momentum continuing.  Barring anything untoward like that or God forbidding some of the pandemic and all this kind of things, I see the trend being pretty positive both in India as well as in most of the world at this point in time. So I feel very positive that things will be looking up in terms of advertising revenues as well for the channels of the media companies into the immediate future. So now the last question. Are you looking for more sponsorship opportunities in Indian cricket? We are always looking for opportunities. They don't only have to be sponsorship opportunities. Sponsorship is one way by which you try to connect with and communicate with consumers and engage them. But there are so many other ways, even independent of sponsorships. So having said that, for the right opportunities, we're always open and it's a matter of prioritizing and adjusting our portfolio of investments. Thank you so much for talking with us and congratulations once again. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time and for having me on your show. Thank you.


I'm Lieutenant Christy Cook.  I really love the opportunity that we have to be flexible and innovative in our development. So what I do a lot of the time is I'm actually tracking our threats. So what's going on in the news and politics today has everything to do with what cyber operations are actually taking place.


While you and your family are getting hit by sky-high prices at the gas pump, big oil is raking it in. So how can we help everyday Americans weather higher prices while holding big oil accountable for its price gouging? Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has a bill that will do just that. Senator, why is this tax, a windfall profits tax, different from any other tax? It's actually probably a bit of a misnomer to even call it a tax, because taxes usually take the revenues and fund the government. This doesn't fund the government. This is a clawback of excess profits that these companies are grabbing from Americans, and it goes back into Americans' pockets in the nature of quarterly dividend, the way a shareholder might get a quarterly dividend. This gives regular working Americans a quarterly dividend. It sounds very much like the Alaska dividend that Alaskans get from oil extraction in Alaska. It's applied differently, obviously. It's coming from oil companies' excessive profits. But getting dividends out of oil is not a brand new idea. It's just this one is going after the oil companies. Yeah, going after the excess profits and sharing them with the American people. No funds for government all back into people's pockets. It's such an obvious idea. It's so important, and it ought to be every member of the Senate and maybe even some Republicans ought to be jumping on board this, because it's popular. I mean, oil companies are making a huge amount of money right now. Their profits are extraordinary, and they are raising their prices on top of their profits. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a racket, because the cost at the wellhead in Texas hasn't changed significantly, which changed significantly is the global oil price, which is set first by an international cartel of countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and then speculators who jumped in to move markets around when Putin attacked Ukraine. So you have this world price that has soared, and it's completely disconnected from the cost of actually pumping oil. And that's why you end up with $200 billion in fossil fuel profits. And that's a lot of money. And I think we ought to give some of it back to the American people. And they are profiting. I mean, why? The reason we call this profiteering is they're taking these profits and they are buying back their shares of stock. They're not giving it to their workers. They're not investing in new production. They're not doing, they're not moving from fossil fuels into renewable energy sources. What they're doing is basically taking all of this extra money that consumers are spending at the pump and they are pumping it into the pockets of shareholders, very wealthy people. And as you know, also into the pockets of CEOs, because when you do stock buybacks, it runs up the share price and usually the compensation package is affected by that. So the CEOs make out like bandits at the same time. Which is probably why CEOs not only want to respond to their shareholders by buying back shares of stock, but also want to respond to their own, should we call it even greed, by buying back shares of stock. You have pointed this out. There is a relationship between the timing of when these stock buybacks happen and when these CEOs actually get these big, rich stock option plans. And when it's $200 billion, you could do a lot of investment in renewables. You could do a lot of investment in clean carbon capture technology. There are so many better things to be done right now in the energy sector. There's a massive transition coming at these oil companies. Instead of spending this money to prepare for it, they're just blindly lining their pockets and their shareholders' pockets and not paying any attention to the outer environment of the transition that's coming. So what you're saying is essentially, why not put a windfall profits tax on these companies and return this excess money, if they're not going to put it into renewables, of return the excess money to consumers who are paying for the nose? Again, why would anybody be opposed to this? I assume every one of your Republican colleagues in the Senate has joined on. Unfortunately, in Congress, the Republican Party is essentially the political wing of the fossil fuel industry. So they tend to follow fossil fuel industry direction. And for the reasons that we've just discussed, the fossil fuel industry loves share buybacks and the extra income for CEOs. The Republican Party just follows in lockstep with what the fossil fuel industry tells it. Well, how can the Republican Party be penalized at the polls? I'm talking about the midterms. Why would average working people who are paying through the nose right now for gas and the Republican Party are shills for major oil companies, why would anybody vote Republican in the midterms? Well, they have a very, very powerful narrative machine. You don't run a industry as massive as the oil and gas industry with a $600 billion annual subsidy for your polluting product according to the International Monetary Fund without having lots of money to spend on controlling the narrative, putting out your propaganda, and trying to convince everybody that the solution to every problem is to pump more oil and gas. So they are very good at cranking out a phony narrative and we're just beginning to catch up. But I hope having this actual bill in place that will actually put money in people's pockets is a way to make an alternative to that fossil fuel narrative real. So if I can just restate, the oil companies who are hugely profitable already, they are raising their price to get even more profits. Average working people are paying huge amounts of money at the pump and what are they doing with this extra money? They are not putting it into renewables. They are buying back shares of stock that gives CEOs and major investors a lot of extra money and they're also putting it into propaganda that tells people that oil is great or that we've got to drill more or that the future is in oil instead of in renewables. So this is a, this when for profits tax that you have introduced is critically important on all of these levels. And here are two words that you will never hear, climate change.  This is sort of the policy version of that. We're just going to erase climate change out of the conversation. Well, presumably, Senator, the other thing that's being erased from the conversation is corporate power because the power of these oil companies, not only to shape the narrative, but also to charge the money that they are charging on top of humongous profits comes from their control over the market. And their control over Congress. And their control over Congress. The Republican Party, I assume you're talking about, and maybe one or possibly two Democratic senators, although I'm not going to ask you to name them. You know, the funny thing about this is that if you look at Republican theory, they're supposedly big originalists. You know, they want to go and understand the original meaning of the Constitution. Well, one thing that anybody who reads the Constitution knows is that there's no corporate role in American politics at all in the Constitution. None. Zero. Not discussed in the Federalist Papers. Not discussed in the Philadelphia debates. None. And yet, they've carefully built an ever more powerful role for corporations in American politics. And like the frog in the pot, we've let them do it until now the pot's starting to boil.  Well, I couldn't agree with you more. And there is a direct connection between what you're doing right now with regard to this kind of windfall profit stocks on oil companies and also the ridiculous, absurd degree of power oil companies and other corporations have over American politics and the secret money that is going into politics from these giant companies. You're working on both ends of this and it is very, very important. So Senator, I want to thank you for everything you're doing and thank you, Secretary. And those of us out here on the hustings, we will do everything we possibly can to support you. Much appreciated. Let's get this bill passed and get money into working Americans' pockets.


long time fans who have won Birkenstock forever and ever, they would tell you that the rest of the world right now is just waking up to what they've known all along.