Hello, welcome to the Judge Ben's show. My name is Ben Joseph. I'm a retired Vermont trial judge This is a program in which I interview people about subject Relate to issues in Vermont law Today is December 17th as we're recording this I've already interviewed one person today about the legal aspects of the cannabis control board and Now I'm going to interview Catherine Antley a physician Who's Here she's a member of the Vermont Medical Society. We're going to talk about the things that the society has proposed that relate to the advertising and sale of marijuana or cannabis is The proponents like to call it That's going to start in 2022 Catherine has been very much involved with this for a long time really and knows a lot about What might be done to control the harms that can be caused by the increased use of this drug What do you think? Thank you. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here. What would you like to tell the public? I think I think maybe we should start with some go through the slides And it sort of gives a background about where the doctors the perspective of the physicians coming Approaching this issue. All right. I think you know as a summary Physicians want vermonters to be informed decision makers so if you're a consumer that you are an informed consumer so you can make informed decisions and You might even make a decision not to consume It's appropriate to know the risks. Okay, if you if it's for sale in your state And and as communities to make decisions about whether they're going to have Just you know Shops selling cannabis drug in their town or not It's important for them to know what the ramifications of that might be And some of which they may have no idea. So this is the the physician's perspective. I think it's very Different from what the public sees generally We're informed as a public. We're informed By advertising by what's on the internet where we are influenced by all these things Physicians who interact with the public who are now as you'll see consuming in Vermont Because it is legal So their perspective is different. They see We're not talking about the physicians as consumers. We're talking about people they deal with his patients, right? Right, right? Although I mean it's Yeah Okay, so if we're gonna go to the slides, okay, and the first question is sort of why why are we talking about cannabis now that? Vermont has already, you know decided to commercialize. Are we once and done? Well, no, not really The first thing that informs us is we look at the 2019 usd I'm sorry in SDUH survey Which is a nationwide survey and there's Vermont number one in past use You know rate of marijuana use Those percentage of the population using that's right So now, you know those first three Vermont Oregon Colorado flip around a little bit, but we 2019 number one. So this is when we wrote the resolution. This is concerning Why is it concerning? Well, obviously we have a number of issues That that we're seeing in the ERs and in our urgent cares and otherwise psychosis, suicidal, ideation Scrobbing which is the screaming and vomiting because it's not just a vomit. It's a painful It won't stop it goes on if I guess if folks thought saw the video You see people and it really extreme pain And sometimes get hooked on opiates later because to deal with the pain, which is another another problem You can get seizures, cardiovascular you know, obviously a lot of vehicle accidents and And so addiction so there are a number of issues that we are seeing So we focused on 15% THC you might say well, why why did why does the medical society care about the potency? You know once it's there it's there and actually the reason is we'll just go through this slide a little bit more carefully In Holland, which has had a liberal Cannabis policy for a very long time about 10 years ago They proposed first this idea of limiting everything above THC 15% is a hard drug and There's science to that Should be considered a hard drug like cocaine according to the Dutch. Well, why is that what they saw was as the potencies increased? There's a lag time, but then later on As that that as that increase Yet gets manifest in the population you see an increase in psychosis and ER visits so so So this was the first indication that we were dealing with a different drug when you're getting up to 60% or 30% Which is double this and I think it's important to realize that in Colorado when they voted in California when they voted It was a population level vote, right? And so they were voting on what they experienced in the 70s and 80s, which was very low Potency so people individual people not doctors not physicians not scientists We're making this decision based on their largely their own personal experience or sort of a libertarian view if someone wants to use no big deal what happened after that vote was that the concentration of THC has gone up just to Concentrations that really almost unprecedented so that now a large percentage of the Cannabis that's sold in Colorado is the super high potency THC and It's there's a reason for that high THC high concentration THC creates addiction More quickly in in in individuals. We know that from science and so because Just you know not at 80% or more of the of the of the THC that's sold of the product that's sold is consumed by just 20% or less of the consumers the industry is very invested in creating Consumers who have a use disorder? So this high potency THC fits right into the industry playbook But it has serious problems for the population in terms of the the side effects This is a great slide. That was I'm sorry that last slide was created by Dr. Libby stout from college a psychiatrist from Colorado and this one is by dr. Bertha Madras, and it is an excellent slide has a lot of information One thing I want to point out is that this is in in Europe. So in Europe they looked at different In Locations and the places that had high potency THC had more cannabis induced psychosis less potency if your average potency in your city is low you have a less psychosis and this was a very well done study very powerful and Their conclusion was in Amsterdam If high potency cannabis use were no longer available So if you can roll back the clock ten years or so we're not that far, right? And you can get rid of the high potency THC 50% of the Of the first episode psychosis could be prevented So right now in the in Vermont. We're having a crush in the years We have you know wait people being warehoused in years for not just hours, but days Often times adolescence often times for psychiatric reasons Now we have Vermont has the highest use in the nation 2019 if highest percentage of people using the drug that's right and if we are if the United States uses more than other countries which is At least conceivable It's possible that we're the highest in the nation in the world We're certainly up there. So So this study showed that 50% of those ER visits for first episode psychosis or Presentations first episode psychosis would be prevented and I would postulate that that's probably true in Vermont Just because of our high use rate that we have Documentation up. Well, it's in the interest of the people who are selling this stuff To create consumers who are addicted to the drug Who consumers who develop a use disorder? Yes Yeah, if they're addicted and they simply must be using it. They're more likely to have bad consequences, right?  So use disorder means you're using Even though there are problems in your life that are documented. So that's and that's and those you're right those folks who suffer from a use disorder are the Consumers that the industry is interested in creating and it's been documented that they can create Because the high-quotency THC is more addictive Okay, so this I think is a really important slide This is a new article that came out in March and it's by Dr. Volkov and one of the things that it showed is that in teens They're demonstrating and a very well-done study again that for teens Marijuana can be as addictive as opioids Now that is a super sort of new thought And it's talking about heroin and cocaine the pills, you know So So that's very powerful statement. It's a very concerning statement. It's kind of a scary statement I think in my opinion But I think it's important for us to recognize that our teens are very vulnerable To to creating to the creation of a use disorder So so you have high potency which is going towards use disorder You have targeting children or youth if possible, which is also a use disorder now The other issue is a couple other articles have come out Cannabis use increases the frequent the risk of developing opioid use disorder We know that the predominant predictor of an adult opioid misuse is having marijuana having used marijuana before the age of 18 And the number one risk factor for adolescent opioid use is ever having used marijuana and that's the yrbs 2022 And what kind of treatment is possible just tell them to be abstinent or well I think that's you know, that's an issue. I mean they have lots of lots of treatments out there and and But I think one of the issues is that your environment really affects whether you will have success in recovery So if you have an environment where you smell it if you have an environment where all your friends are using if you have an environment where you go by the place where you bought it every time or you see the person who sold it from you then those Triggers all make it, you know more difficult and so in a place like Vermont with very high use rates and very high There's also a diagram that the health department has That I've seen that shows not only is our use rate high, but also our perception of harm is not going up but going down So we have this paradoxical situation in Vermont and actually all over the country Where use is going up and the consequences of use are going up, but the public's perception continues to go Okay, that so we've talked a lot about the social determinants of health social determinants Our health are if you if you you know have poverty if you've been sexually abused if you've been you know Suffered child abuse if you you know don't have enough to eat these things are are a series of 20 questions or so you can give to any group of people and The results of that quiz will can predict those people's lifetime So their life expectancy So you'd think that taking their blood and seeing if they have chai cholesterol or if their dad had you know Colon cancer would be a high predictor But this is the social determinants of health given the simple quiz can give you an indication of who's at risk for Health problem, so this is a powerful thing We're talking a lot about that in the legislature right now and people are trying to make changes That's very admirable to decrease poverty to decrease all these things and to increase things like a trusted A trusted adult is would counteract that so this survey looks at you know positive and negative predictors of health so that's important What we're not talking about in Vermont, which is very important is the commercial determinants of health and the commercial There's a there's a literature on the commercial. I just heard this term a few months ago About a month ago But you can actually do a literature search on the commercial determinants of health This is this is a you know a body of work and I think the answer to your question is Why is the perception of harm going down as our harm is going up? Because the commercial determinants of health health Trump You know knowledge of of the of the risks knowledge of the risks that the Vermont Medical Society is trying to get out there So I think that's and that means the advertising the internet Well the political what you hear is the are you suggesting that the medical society could be sponsoring Advertising on the subject. I don't know but I think that someone It would be nice, you know, I mean we have a new infrastructure bill So it would be good if we spent some of that on the social determinants of health and countering the You know corporate determinants of health. This next slide is really important too. I want to So this is right now Vermonters are Confronted with you know, are we gonna put? cannabis drug stores in our town and And they're being informed Largely by folks wishing to sell it, right? So the local person who's wants to open up a shop is putting out a lot of he's investing or she a lot of money in Advertising or hiring lobbyists to put his their message sure for message out and this is an example Yes to question number three is from one of these lobbyists who put it out there And I'll just read it for you what while so they're saying, you know, one of the questions that folks bring up is is Youth use rate and they say well, this is well-intentioned every study ever conducted in any study any state on Underage cannabis use following legalization has concluded that legalization does not Lead to an increase in underage cannabis use. So this is What we have on the right-hand side of the screen are three excellent large powerful studies which Demonstrate the opposite so here we have an example of where the public is being informed by people who wish to sell to them and The science is largely unknown is that it's obscure. It's and it's not being Reported now you might ask well, why is that and there are a couple things when you have a vote All of our government employees in Vermont people who worked for the state of Vermont and or federal government largely withdraw from from Engaging active they don't put ads on the radio saying hey, you know that you know If you have a marijuana drug shop next to your kids, they're more likely to use like they won't Put that kind of counter to someone who's wanting to open up a shop So when there's a vote people in government generally step back and Those health department. That's our content experts. So who do we rely on who do we rely on and the other issue is You know, who do we rely on to inform the public? So the other issue is That we have a lot of nonprofits who are experts so our prevention professionals And they you know because they're nonprofits, they are to rely on grant money They're often 501 C3's 501 C3's risk their grant funding So if you are 501 C3 you may risk your funding risk your job if you stand up and say I want to tell you the facts about a Marijuana drug shop next to your kids are within 500 feet of your school or less than you know less than 500 feet of a daycare or playground So I think this is part of the reason Why the corporate determinants of health in this situation are trumping are really overshadowing overpowering The content experts in this field So this is this brings us to you know, why did we do this? This is our warning from our medical society warning on THC may cause psychosis Impair driving addiction Suicide attempt uncontrolled vomiting and harm to a nursing baby or developing fetus and Importantly psychosis and suicide or self-harm can occur in individuals with no previous history of psychosis or mental illness We're seeing in Colorado You know this high potency THC that they didn't vote on so now they're sort of rebelling You know the the people are saying well my kid is sick legislators kids are psychotic legislators kids are Schizophrenic from marijuana people who would otherwise be well talented attractive young you know young people and so they're angry and so they've passed this bill You know we need to look at the high potency and this is part of you know Chris Rogers the medical director for the child and adolescent services and one of their hospitals psychiatric hospitals He says you know person after person refuses to accept that marijuana could be bad for them How could it be they're taught to believe this is a harmless plant and yet? you know They're just seeing tragic Repeatedly treat kids who are too psychotic to know what's real who they can trust are where they are the rates of adolescent psychosis have risen steadily since legalization so that's because it's being More of it's being used and what's being sold legally has higher contents of THC Then we're available in the past right right right and the regulation that was promised hasn't happened So we're having kids who use are using very high potency THC, which they really shouldn't be getting their hands on Shouldn't be getting their hands on any of it, but they're using very high potency and they're getting very sick but another important thing that the medical society said this is not just a kid problem in other words You know part of the the studies that inform that cannabis causes You know is linked to the development of psychosis are hundreds like that they're numerous studies and It fulfills the Bradford Hill criteria for causation which we use for tobacco You can't you know take a group of kindergartners and divide them in half and give half tobacco and half not and see which one's developed You know lung cancer or the same thing with THC and and psychosis So you take a number of things that if you could give them higher doses Do they develop quicker if you give it to them when you're they're younger do they develop it quicker? So you see over All these different studies and you can come to the conclusion as we did with tobacco that there is a link to this disease and that's the sort of of Really clear evidence medical evidence that we have the marijuana is associated with psychosis in Vermont medical society really wants people to understand that it's so curious that the public knows that Then abuse of this drug and high high potency of the drug Hurts people People don't think do they understand the public doesn't really grasp. No. No, I don't in fact I've heard a proponents say, you know people will use use less because it's more potent and that's that's just yeah No, it's it's a lie. You know, it's not true, but we're seeing we're seeing This you know dissembling type statements quite a lot. Here's the summary for the Cannabis hyper-remissus project, which I hope you'll show the video maybe again after this And this is I just wanted to go through again This is why the medical society is concerned before we had legalization I heard doctor, you know what that one of the legislators get up in the you know In the legislature and and give a talk about why they were voting. No because you know, they said the Hospitalization rates would go up in the medical society Put that information and our resolutions out them at those ER Visits would go up and indeed now, you know here. This was 2014 What we predicted came true 2021 now we're seeing kids and mental health care waiting for days in the emergency road In the digger, but there's no mention in five different articles that this could be related to cannabis And so then I'm getting back to your point Why is it that we're seeing more harms medically, but the population is is not aware or not And this is one where we you know wrote and said please add this You know to the reporter and he said oh no one in the state is talking about cannabis as part of a psychosis They're part of mental illness and so the head of you know Vermont Department of Mental Health child and help help Family division wrote back and said as someone who works on calling the psychiatric inpatient units and an emergency room I can tell you the cannabis plays quite a large role in why people go to the eds and the hospital that The Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health are also well aware of the role cannabis is playing in psychosis and suicide and of course the ER is crowded with people who are there because of the Pandemic I mean it's not coming at a good time And quite frankly I didn't have time to put this in there But there's a new article that I discussed Via email with Dr. Levine Which shows that but if you're using cannabis you will not have as strong a reaction in other words You your immune system won't react positively to the Vaccines if you're using cannabis that you don't mount as strong that that yeah That's a new article that's come out and I think you know you could speculate That may be impacting clearly people should know you know that if you're smoking marijuana it may Prevent or impede your your immune system from mounting as robust a response to the vaccine COVID vaccine as you would otherwise This is just showing that even a little bit of marijuana apparently affects the thickening of the of the prefrontal cortex in children or in teens It affects your head It affects it well the brain is it affects the anatomically So they're taking an MRI picture of the brain over time and they're following if it's a large study and they're and it's low potency And they're they're seeing that the prefrontal cortex prematurely sins and Along with that there's changes in these behave in these kids behavior, which is controlled for the social determinants of health that we were talking about So we have the highest use rates in the in the United States So we're experiencing those consequences like the first study for example the er over utilization We haven't talked about health care costs the Green Mountain Care Board is looking into this But you know have do we need to call the Green Mountain Care Board and and have a lecture with them too? I don't know how much they're following this topic Addiction of course is expensive decrease perception of harm impacts all levels of Vermont society And as a driver for increasing marijuana use so This is just an example with the Colorado child and adolescent psychiatric society came up with and This is our recommendation. We want everyone to be aware Cannabis THC may cause psychosis impaired driving addiction suicide attempt uncontrolled vomiting Farm harm to feed us a nursing baby. So we want something that every school nurse can show to their class And that every you know physician can can show to their patients So this is the island with this slide This is just as a sort of side-by-side on the left you see what the cannabis control board warning what they're recommending And on the right you see what what the medical society is and he says there's a lot more that can be done than just trying to pack a whole bunch of information on a tiny little label and so I Think what's important is that for example on their label? They say can be habit-forming and ours say Can cause addiction so addiction is something That you know when you have a use disorder you continue to use even though you may lose your job or your wife or your husband or whatever Habit-forming brushing my teeth. It's habit-forming it taking a walk taking a walk with a loved one is Habit-forming or you're spending time with your dog is habit-forming So we feel like this is and really an inaccurate it in in adequate warning It does not mention psychosis, which is a recognized But the the wordy thing on the left on the slide has been approved by the cannabis. Yes That's the recommendation to the legislature. Oh my god So we really would encourage you know if if you're a vermonter if you use or you don't use But if you feel like it's important for vermonters all vermonters use and not to know the risks of psychosis suicide Suicide attempt uncontrolled of arm-eating harm to use please, you know call that cannabis control board because these these risks are not listed On their label right now Catherine I want to thank you so much for coming in today. This has really been great. I Don't want to thank all of you for looking in Play please consider what Catherine's proposing here I think there has to be a better understanding of the dangerous involved with the use of this stuff whether you want it sold or not there should be a an effort made to warn people about what what this is what this involves so that they can make an educated choices to whether or not to use this stuff and It's it's really a it's such a very major It's a major issue. It's going to really affect a lot of people and how bad it is is going to depend upon how well people are Educated about what they're getting involved with Thank you all for looking in I look forward to seeing you again sometime. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you


Agricultural research has several goals. One is to boost food production. Another is to improve the income and livelihoods of farmers. Many research projects draw a direct line between the two, then try to find a way to boost productivity in the hopes that farmers will produce more and become better off. Crop breeders try to develop varieties that yield more. Pest researchers try to find a way to control an insect that damages the crop. Livestock scientists look for vaccines to control diseases or a better way of keeping animals. It is the researchers who decide what the problem is. They come up with a new technology and roll it out to farmers. They expect that the farmers will seize the opportunity and adopt the new technology straight away. But it often does not work out that way. The researchers are disappointed to find that few farmers actually adopt the new ideas. Low adoption means few gains in productivity, little extra output and no big change in farmers' income. MilkIT, a project managed by the International Livestock Research Institute, tested a different approach. This project worked to improve dairy in India and Tanzania. Instead of having the researchers decide the priorities, it asked the milk producers and other people interested in dairying what they thought were the main issues. To do this, the project set up innovation platforms. Groups of people who were interested in the same thing, in this case milk. They were dairy farmers, traders, extension workers, input suppliers, people at various stages in the value chain. Each person brings their own skills and ideas to identify the common problems and find ways of solving them. The innovation platforms in India focus first on linking the farmers to the market so they could sell their milk. The farmers had complained that they couldn't sell the milk they produced. So the innovation platforms helped them organize groups of farmers to supply milk to nearby towns through self-help groups and cooperatives. They set up collection centres and employed people to test and weigh the milk and bulk it and arrange for the vehicles to transport the milk to town. Cooperative members even set up a shop in town to sell the milk. The prospect of earning money gave the producers a strong incentive to increase their sales. They started adopting all kinds of new production methods. They bought feeding troughs and choppers so they could make the most of their feed. They planted new grasses to produce more fodder. They brought improved animals that would produce more milk. They vaccinated their cows against disease. With markets in place, the innovation platform helped its members identify and overcome different problems. In Tanzania, the innovation platform members wanted to focus more on fodder production. The platforms looked for new varieties of fodder grasses. They helped farmers fence off land to use for grazing in the dry season. More feed meant more milk. But the effect was not as big as in India. Perhaps because the market linkages were not yet in place. So what can we conclude? What should a research or development organisation do? In India, focusing on the market was fast and efficient. It had a big effect on milk production but it was unpredictable. It was impossible to predict beforehand what solutions might be needed. The members of innovation platforms decided on the interventions. They, not researchers, drove the process. The innovation platforms in Tanzania used a more traditional approach focusing on productivity. The gains were slower and fewer farmers took up the new technologies. Only after some time did private processes take an interest in the increased local milk production. And they were concerned that quantities were small and could not be sustained year-round. So there is no right approach. But on balance, sorting out milk marketing early on can really stimulate farmers' interest in boosting production. If they can earn more by selling more milk, farmers have an interest in feeding their cows better. An assured market means they will want to invest in productivity. They will then start demanding new techniques and research and development organisations have to be ready to listen to them and to find the solutions. Other innovations will tend to follow on without much need for a push. Innovation platforms which bring together farmers, extension workers, traders, processors, policy makers and researchers are a good way to discuss these issues and find out what the priorities are. Innovation platforms should not be used just to push solutions that the researchers or policy makers think will work. Instead, the farmers and traders should do the talking and the researchers and policy makers should spend more time listening. Only then will they be able to find solutions that the farmers and traders will actually use.


Yes, hello, everyone. Nice to see you. Well, not see you, but nice to have you join us today. So I'm Richard Williams and I'm a senior lecturer in the music department here. And I'm going to run through two programmes because I'm also the co-convener of Creative Arts. So we have lots of different students come to us with many different interests. Some are very interested in music. And so we offer two different degree programmes for those students. One is music and where you combine music with another subject. And then the other one is creative arts and cultural industries, which includes all of our music modules. But if you are here and you're thinking, I'm not particularly musical, I'm just interested in the creative arts. Don't panic because, as you'll see, there's a lot of breadth in the creative arts and cultural industries degree. So while there is a pathway through it for those of you who are interested in music, you know, we have people working on film, history of art and other aspects of the cultural industries as well. So very happy to answer any questions, but otherwise I'll just get started and share a few things with you. So I don't know if you've been to Siras before, we're situated in the heart of London and we're surrounded by museums, galleries and the British libraries around the corner and so on. The key thing about us, of course, is that we focus on specific regions. So we're interested in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and their diasporas. And in fact, when I say specific regions, that's a lot. That's that's most of the world. But nonetheless, this is actually quite unusual, as I'm sure you're aware. You know, unfortunately, a lot of university degree programs in the UK focus dominantly on Europe and the North America and really take them as their starting point. And we do the opposite. We do talk occasionally about Europe and North America. But on the whole, our priority is the rest of the world. And we try to have a very global perspective. We are a relatively small university but surrounded by one of the largest cultural cities in in the world. And that's a very nice balance to have what I particularly like about Siras personally is compared to other universities in London. It's small, it feels intimate. It feels like a village in the heart of a very big place. And our students really enjoy that as well. They get to know us, the teaching staff very well and they get to know each other really well as well. And it's also very international university. It's worth saying we're about 50 percent international students. We also have lots of mature students as well because a lot of people discover Siras slightly later in life. And so the conversations in the class are always really exciting because you'll have perspectives from Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Peru, Japan. And so the conversations can be really, really interesting. And also just to say, historically, we're also very invested in languages. Our range of non-European languages is really, really exciting. And we have many students who arrive to do musical creative arts and then say, oh, well, I want to study Swahili. I want to study Hindi. I want to study Korean. And we find ways to accommodate those students. I work primarily on music and literature and visual art. And I use four Indian languages and I dabble with another couple. So languages are really at the heart of many of our programmes. But today I want, as I said earlier, our focus is music and the creative arts and cultural industries. This is just an image from our main music room. And you'll see all of what not all some of our instruments up around the walls on the background. So if you do come to Siras, we your you would have your a lot of your classes in here where we have Indian tabla on the top. Maybe you can see my mouse. We have Korean guy gum. And in this instant, this is a class for Cora from West Africa. But let's dive straight into the degree programme. So the next bit is going to be a little detailed. But hopefully it will be a good opportunity for you to get a sense of what you would actually be studying here. So I'm going to move back and forth between the two degrees. B.A. music and is and I don't say this lightly. It is unique compared to other music degrees around the world. It's completely unique because our focus is on the world beyond Europe. We offer courses that you just will not find anywhere else. We have courses on music and politics in Cuba, popular music of East Asia, Morocco, South Asia, all kinds of things. What's also quite important is that we have a range of different musical styles that we are interested in. So some of those styles are traditional and historical folk music and so on. But also we go right up to contemporary artists, experimental artists, sound artists and so on. We also have a balance between courses that are about the history, the context, the culture of music. But then we also have modules that are about performance. And we also offer training courses in industry facing skills. So that's things like sound recording, podcasting, filmmaking and so on. And these are really important skills. And we've just renovated all of our recording studios. So we have state of the art tech in place. And I think what's really exciting about our program is just the variety. So you'll be moving between different classes, looking at music from the perspective of anthropology, history, composition, the music business, sound studies and so on. Just to give you a taste of the kinds of music that we are interested in, these are two of our performance instructors. So we invite musicians from various traditions to teach our students. And so all of our first year students rotate between different instruments, including the Chora and the Tabla. So just to give you a taste of Chora, this is our teacher, Kajali Koyate, who would be teaching you in first year and potentially afterwards in your degree. Let's give it a taste of the Chora. Yes, safe to say a lot of our students fall in love with Chora while studying it here. It's a really beautiful instrument and we've got a large collection as you've seen already. And then next is Sanju Sahai, who's from a really important lineage of hereditary musicians who are specialists in the art of Tabla. And so he teaches Tabla again to our first year students. And what's really exciting about having these artists as part of our faculty is that they have their own networks. And so in the past, some students have worked with Sanju throughout their degree and then have gone to India with him to take part in his workshops that he runs in India and so on. And so you start off in the classroom at Sahai, but could end up traveling the world following musical sounds. This is a quotation from Tomani Diabate, who you may well know of. He's a multi Grammy award winning musician from Mali. And he's an honorary doctor from Sahai. And he said, the music department at Sahai is the most exciting place in Europe to learn about the great musical traditions from around the world. And we're very proud of our collaborations with master musicians like Tomani Diabate. So the second degree, which many of you will be tuning in for is the BA Creative Arts and Cultural Industries. And there is overlap between these degrees, but the emphasis is slightly different. So this program offers a balance between the sort of hard humanities, disciplines of critical, theoretically rich engagement with different art forms, but also an industry facing perspective, one that looks at the cultural industries and prepares our students for fascinating careers in the art sector. What's really exciting about this program is that it's really interdisciplinary and it's very cross cultural. So you move across different regions, we also move across different art forms, covering art history, music, film and cultural theory, literary theory and so on. It's a really exciting program from that point of view, because it just did you so much variety within that, you will have some students who are there primarily for music that are interested in other things. You have others who are more interested in a region so you have we have students who really connect with, say, Chinese arts. So they might look at Chinese music, Chinese film, Chinese ceramics, Chinese painting and weave their way through looking at lots of different forms and really building up expertise. It's a nice program because it offers this combination of theory and practice. And we have lots of different skills on the table. So these include radio, the art of curating, we look at film festivals and musical performance. And what this is achieved because we have a range of facilities on site. So we have a really important gallery space, the Brunei Gallery, which which changes their exhibition sort of every three months. We also have filmmakers on site, people who do graphic novels are attached to SOAS, we have really interesting alumni coming in. We run workshops with industry professionals all the time. So it's a very good place to sort of connect up to all of the interesting things that are going on around in London. So, for example, our students who take the course presenting world music on radio have in the past gone to BBC Broadcasting House and used the facilities, the recording studios in the BBC offices as part of as part of their course. And of course, needless to say, it's really exciting to be looking at global cultures in London, where we just have so many festivals and events and exhibitions taking place all around us. And so we find ways to connect our students up to all of the things that are going on in the city. So here's the nitty gritty bit. Here's the detail about what you would actually be studying. So I'm going to look at year one, first of all, and I'm going to look at BA Music and and then I'm going to look at creative arts and cultural industries on the next slide. So for BA Music and you would only only you would do four modules with us in your first year. So you would take writing across the arts, which which trains you up into academic skills, thinking about how one approaches talking about different art forms from music to film through writing, through the art of the essay, but also through other kinds of writing. You also take sounds and cultures, which is an introduction to studying society through music and sound. You take decolonising pop, k-pop and beyond. This is something I teach and we ask questions like why are people in Argentina getting really excited about South Korean popular music? So we take k-pop, the k-pop phenomenon as our starting point to ask larger questions about global popular music. So in the past, we've had topics like pop music of Tibet, hip hop in South Sudan, music in Zimbabwe, South Africa, but also India and we take lots of different case studies, but we use k-pop as our starting point and then performance one. So for first year performance, you would alternate between different instruments, kind of open your ears up to different sounds and different approaches to learning music. So our students this year are doing Kora, which you've heard, Tabla, which you've heard, Gamelan. So we've got two Gamelan sets in this image. You can see one of them. So this is from a tuned percussion orchestra from Southeast Asia. And this year we're also including Iranian sun tour, so Persian classical music. So in your first year, you've got a very, very exciting program, mixture of sort of society, aesthetics, musical performance. And then you would team this up with four modules from your second subject. So in particular, we get lots of students who do music and social anthropology, music and world philosophy. Music in Korean is very popular, but we've got a whole range of different combinations available. So it's a very nice way to get expertise in a region or to have a spread of skills. So if you're doing creative arts and cultural industries, you have eight courses because you'll remember for music, it's half and half, so you have four and four. So here you have eight. Some of those are the same. So writing across the arts is there, sounds and cultures is there, the colonizing pop is there, but you bring in some art history, so theories of art and histories of art related to Asian Africa. You also have some film. There's this fantastic module introduction to film language, history and theory. It's really, really interesting. So that introduces you to film studies, which connects up very nicely with music or art history for those of your strengths. And then we give you two options. So here, if you are musically inclined, you can do performance. If you're more art history inclined, you can do some global arts, which is art history modules, or you can bring in a language so you could be studying Hindi or Arabic or Chinese at this point as well. OK, I am giving you a lot of detail. So if you're confused about any of this, please put a question in the chat and I can respond. I'll keep my eyes open. So that's year one. And then I'm just going to quickly touch on years two and three. So for year two in music, you keep performance either something from your first year or you develop a new instrument, we set you up with music teachers from any instrumental genre, basically within reason, from our areas of interest. You also have a theoretical module, which introduces you to cultural theory. And then you get guided options. So these are our music options, things like the world of Cuban music, global hip hop. We have courses on East Asia, Middle East, South Asia. We also have skills like introduction to sound recording, the music business is very popular. So a whole range of really unique options. And in year three, it's similar. So the options rotate year to year. So you always have a set of new things that you might do. But your two compulsory courses, one is urban soundscapes, which talks about understanding the city through sound, music and people's experience of sound. And one on music and travel, which looks at global flows and circulations of musical forms. I'm not going to touch on these in too much detail, but more information is, of course, available on the website about these different modules. We're updating them at the moment because some of these modules, like music and travel, are new. And so we're updating our pages at the moment. But you can refer back to the recording if you want to check what the structures look like. So for creative arts and cultural industries, it's quite different. You have all of those music options available to you so you can bring them in and still make it a very music degree. But some of you may not be that interested in music. You may be curious about musical society or how people think about sound, or how artists are using sound, but it may not be your immediate point of reference, in which case this degree has that flexibility. So in year two, what you're doing is you're looking at, again, key concepts and cultural theory, so you get your theory there. But then you look at curating global arts and arts, cultural commodification, which which look at different aspects of how the cultural industries work, sometimes quite big kind of theories about how we end up with particular kinds of arts being put into galleries, being put on display and other art forms don't necessarily make it into the public eye. We look at how you would go about designing an exhibition on Chinese painting or an album or music from Mali. What are the actual decisions that go into curating an art form from a particular region? And then also we have film festivals and film curating, which is a nice follow on from your first year where you're also looking at film. Sorry, I'm losing my voice. There we go. And then you also have more guided options from art history as well as from music. So these include things like topics in Japanese art, contemporary art, art of the Islamic world, and then also some more industry facing courses like collecting and collections, which again, thinks through some of the the large debates around how collections are formed. At the moment, there's this big move called decolonising the museum. And we've got a number of academics who are really interested in that and looking at about whether objects that have arrived in well, that arrived in London, having been looted or taken in colonial contexts, whether what the politics and the logistics are surrounding, surrounding, returning those objects to other regions, how that works within the museum sector and also open options. So here you can take something from a language to another option that is offered around SOAS in a different department potentially. And in year three, you have a lot of choice. So year three, you do an independent study project, which is effectively like a dissertation. Some students will will write a dissertation and they will write a long essay on a topic that they're particularly interested in. And this is very good training if you want to go into research. Other people will do a creative output. So in the past, we've had students who have who were musical and so recorded an EP and then wrote a critical piece about the decision making process behind creating that EP and how they were going to market it. And so we had one student whose EP is now up on Spotify. And she did that work as part of her independent study project. We you could also potentially do another kind of creative output, including podcasting, making a film, curating a project like an exhibition or a festival. And alongside this, we also offer modules where you can create things. So we will have a module called creative practice which could be including composition or podcasting, etc. We also have a module which we haven't run in the last year because of covid, of course, but we have a work placement module, which is called Directed Study in Creative Industries, where we would team you up with one of our industry partners and you could basically do an internship there for a term and get academic credit for doing that. Again, happy to discuss that more if people are interested. But throughout the degree, we offer a range of creative assessments. Students do video essays, audio essays, creative critical pieces. They design festivals, exhibitions. They do go on gallery tours. They do fieldwork projects. There's a whole range of different things that students are doing here. So who is teaching you? This is always a fun question. So just to give you a couple of insights on the music side, for example, we have Professor Lucy Duran, who is a specialist in the music of West Africa and an ardent devotee of the Chora, apart from anything else. But she also worked at the BBC for about 30 years, has lots of industry contacts, she did a radio documentary series called World Roots, which is all up on iPlayer. So if you go to iPlayer and BBC Sounds and look for World Roots, you will hear her amazing documentaries. I mean, she's really just traveled to most countries on this planet and listened to the music there. So she also produces award-winning albums and films as well as part of her research on the film side. We have also Professor Linda Wadovy, who is a curator of African cinema and set up some really significant film festivals for African filmmakers. And she's also interested in filmmaking herself. And in art history, we have people like Dr. Christian Luknitz, who works on the arts of Tibet and the Himalayas. And when he's not in so as he's usually somewhere in the Himalayas working with monks, helping them preserve and document their artwork in their monasteries. And then also he consults and advises them on setting up their own museums as well. So basically the point is, you know, we have people with regional expertise, linguistic expertise, expertise in particular musical forms, styles, art history forms, film, film genres, et cetera. But a lot of them are also practising in some very important and interesting ways. So what about you? What could you hope to get out of this degree or these degree programs? So what we hope our students leave with is a sense of the nuances of global art forms, a kind of rich, critical, theoretical perspective on things, but also applied skills, transferable skills, industry facing skills. And so we look to help our students enter the workplace and find some really interesting, fascinating career paths. They do this through things like the internship scheme, the work placement module, the contacts that they make on this program. And we have students who end up in all kinds of interesting areas of the arts. So on the music side, on the one hand, we've had quite a few graduates who have gone on to be nominated for the Mercury Prize and Nick Mulvey, who's one of them, well, said that he's studying at SOAS was the broadest horizon he could find in music. What's notable here is that these three artists are all sort of effectively in popular music there. So none of them have really decided to become a classical Indian music performer, etc. Instead, what it really, what SOAS really offered them was to just open their ears to so many different sounds, textures, possibilities, composition strategies, and they brought this into popular music in really interesting and experimental ways. But apart from performance, we also have people like McKelley, Bernal, who is now the lead curator for world and traditional music at the British Library, but other music graduates go on to work in education and research, music therapy, music management, editorial journalism, all kinds of different areas. And on the creative art side, we've had some very interesting students pass through our department, the School of Arts. So some of the School of Arts, more famous in them, I include Claire Su, the co-founder of the Asian Arts Archive, Victoria Chang, who set, who was the director of Vive Arts, which is a really pioneering group that's interested in virtual reality and how virtual reality connects up to new digital art forms. And Ava Langray, who is the artistic director of the Freeze Festival, Freeze London, major arts festival. So again, what's really nice about our alumni is, on the one hand, it's very encouraging and it suggests the kinds of exciting routes that our students can go down, but also we invite them back. We invite them in to connect up with our current students so that we can equip our students with an appreciation of what goes into a career in the cultural sector. So final, final thoughts then, you know, why study music and the creative arts and the cultural industries at SAAS? And again, I suppose this is something that a lot of people might question. They might think, well, it doesn't sound very sensible. It sounds very fun and very interesting. But is this a good move for for your own personal development? And well, obviously, I'm going to say yes, definitely. And our students don't really question this when they get here and discover the things that they're studying. I think just on a basic human level, these programs are about human creativity and they're about human innovation and what it is to be human. What what society and culture can do can achieve. And and yeah, this is quite fundamental. This is the point of being human in a way. There are kinds of wonderful things that we can design, listen to, create. But at the same time, you know, apart from the idealism, we give our students, you know, this critical faculty. They are real sense of how to interrogate, challenge, explore a topic and not be afraid of of something that they're unfamiliar with. I think also this is very important because there's this idea about not about about not generalising about things, having a nuanced perspective on the world. So on the one hand, these are valuable skills our students leave informed and prepared. I mean, where else are you going to have an understanding of what happens in South Sudan, what happens in in Egypt, what's happening in Indonesia and Cuba and all through music and the arts? And this is this is a really exciting opportunity to get a very global education. But it's also about getting representation right. So I remember a few years ago, we were talking to an artist who's been put on at the Tate, a major artist, Serena Bimji. And she was saying how often when she is being curated, including at big national institutions, people misidentify her work and they focus on her identity and they focus on where she comes from. But are they foreground that rather than actually talking about her art? And so she'll present a new exhibition and everyone will be talking about about who she is, but they won't be talking about what she has to say about colour, form, shape, texture. So we're interested in preparing our students to getting things right by understanding and appreciating artists and doing it respectfully. I think also this is a bit of a cliche, but it is a changing world out there. And a lot of the art forms we look at that we really appreciate and love are vulnerable. And so we look at how tradition is evolving and how traditions fit into into our world. So we look at things like heritage, preservation, sustainability. Many of our students do go on to work in places like NGOs and UNESCO and start thinking critically about how to preserve art forms. And this appreciation of how to preserve things or think about sustainability links up with the appreciation of the cultural industries, which is such a dynamic, huge, huge part of our economy. And it's a really important thing to be plugged into. And of course, we look at global arts in the digital age. What is happening to arts from Sudan or Korean art forms in a global connected digital age? And ultimately, I always say only at SOAS, just to really make the point that we do things here, our students write about things here that you just do not find in other places. And that's what really makes it so exciting. That's what gets us out of bed in the morning, the chance to learn and understand and appreciate things that you just wouldn't really have access to in in many places. So I will finish there. That is my email address. So if you are curious about any of this, please do drop me an email. If you're watching the recording again, I'm always happy to answer questions. So feel free. But for those of you who are in the call at the moment, I'm very happy to take any questions as well. So feel free to raise your hand or put them in the chat, whatever works. I think maybe one thing that we can kind of maybe have a bit of discussion about. And it was in some ways was praised by I hope I'm pronouncing this right, Sami, who said that she had actually attended the in-person open day that we've held already, but wasn't able to attend every single talk that she wanted to because there's quite a few talks she was interested in has come back today. So I think maybe that's one thing that we can kind of touch upon in that at SOAS, it's very interdisciplinary. You have your chosen discipline that maybe is your kind of primary focus. But it's one of the beauties of SOAS is that you are able to incorporate so many different areas in your studies in general and kind of broaden your field out a little bit. So maybe we can talk a bit more about kind of the various different options that we have and the kind of intersection and connection between so many of our programs. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So for example, you know, we have many students who are interested in in African studies and they will be scattered around in different degree programs in SIS and and they will take our modules on African music in order to deepen their understanding of African cultures and societies, be it East Africa or West Africa and so on. And the same goes the other way around. So our students who are really interested in East Asian art, for example, might take a module in Chinese philosophy, for example, to give them that depth and to look at culture from from a few different angles. We also I should have said this earlier. We also have a partnership with Kings College London and the music department there. So if you are on the music program in SOAS, you can take some options from Kings College London. So if you're saying, well, yeah, I love music from around the world, but I also really love jazz, you know, you can study jazz as well. We'll just send you to our friends at Kings. And similarly, we because our courses are so unique, we regularly have students popping in from LSE, from Kings, from UCL, taking our courses because they just can't find them anywhere else. And we also have a lot of international exchange students who are regularly popping into our classes again, because this is one of the only places in the world where you can take some of these exciting things. Oh, so I'm seeing. Yes, so actually my summaries question kind of goes to that point. So yes, if you are taking a different degree, say history, then you would have access to some of our modules. Yeah. So every year there's a list of these are called the open options list. So the open options list is a bank of modules that all departments offer to students all around SOAS. So some things like performance are only for music students, but then other things like Song, Voice and Body in Indian music, that would be something that would be offered more broadly. Great. Well, do feel free to pop any more questions into the chat. There's no such thing as a silly question. So we welcome all of the questions that you might have. It might be around particular modules or focuses of the program, but it could also just be to things like what kind of areas might you go on to after your program? Or even if you have questions about the application process, do feel free to pop them in and I'm happy to kind of go through that as well. It is a bit of a smaller group, so I know it kind of feels like we're putting you on the spot a little bit. But yeah, do feel free to ask anything that you would like. Otherwise, I'll just play some more Cora music just to fill up the silence. Well, people gather their thoughts. So we've got options. Yeah, let me play a little bit more just in case anyone wants to type anything. There we go. Good question. Lovely. So the question then is what do you look for in a personal statement for creative arts? Yeah. So for creative arts and cultural industries, we have a really varied mix of students. They're coming in with a very with a with a real mix of backgrounds behind them. So we're open about which subjects you've studied in the past. We want to see, you know, a kind of humanity style way of thinking about things. So if you've studied literature or history or music or fine or history of art or art or or anything, we're quite open geography, you know, these kinds of subjects are always welcome. But I suppose what we would be thinking about would be a passionate interest in some kind in in some of the arts that that we focus on. So that could be anything from music, painting, sculpture, film, TikTok videos, I mean, we're interested in in social media and digital art forms, all kinds of things, because, you know, there's so many to choose from. And then I suppose an interest in in our regions, I mean, what's really exciting about SAS as a student is it's an unusual choice. We're a very unusual choice. We shouldn't be, but we're unusual in the sense that we do look at things that other degree programs don't. So what that happened, what is the result of that is that all the students we get here are here for a reason. They're all here because they they feel frustrated that they can't find out about music in Africa or they don't know what's happening in contemporary arts in Asia and, you know, they they love K-pop, but they can't find courses that really talk about Korean music, Korean history, Korean culture. And so we we get students who come here who are really interesting and interested in in things from around the world. And so if you can just reflect a bit of that in your personal statement and sort of say, you know, I'm thinking of of of of of doing this course because I'm, you know, motivated by by an appreciation of an art form from the rest of the world, then that would be wonderful. Yeah, but we have very, very students. So there's no single template. Yeah, it's really about the passion of the students. I think that's that's what we hope for. Yeah. And I would add that, you know, a lot of students are always saying to me like, I want to put something in my personal statement that's going to grab attention and or I want to have done some great internship or some great work experience that's related to it, but I just don't have it. And I think for us it's it's about learning what's interested you. And that could be what media you've you've used or consumed, what you, you know, kind of where you get your influences from. It could be personal experience. There's so many different areas, so it's not a one size fits all. And I think a really great thing about a personal statement that I always kind of go back to is it's exactly that it's personal, it's personal to you. And so sometimes that desire to find that big kind of stand out statement, if you will, takes you away from kind of just thinking about yourself and your own interests and kind of where you might want to go. And maybe some questions that you have. We don't expect you to be able to answer all the questions on a certain subject, because if you did, you wouldn't need to come and learn it with us. But it's more just kind of what are the questions in your mind about this? And again, kind of going back to our regional faces, I think, you know, quite often you'll see at different institutions that maybe one particular year, there will be a focus or a fad almost in terms of looking at a particular particular region's music or a particular genre of music. And I think what the importance of it is so us is we see this as an ongoing focus that we have. And it kind of, you know, it carries on year after year after year. It's not something that just kind of pops up one year and then kind of is going to replace the next. So I think that's really interesting for you to kind of come and join us and take from our programs. Do feel free to pop any more questions here. We are sort of coming to the end now. But I think we have time for one or two more questions if you do want to pop them in, but obviously no pressure as well. As I say, it's a smaller group here. So sometimes it can seem like quite a lot to take in. Maybe one of the things I would say again about the kind of regional focus. And so I think we've kind of talked about it already is that the students who do come here, like you say, do come for a particular reason. And I would say that we have a very international student body. And I I kind of phrase that in terms of an international student body, both from outside of the UK, but also quite an international student body from within the UK, if that makes sense in that a lot of our students, you know, will have will come from a range of different backgrounds and heritage as well, and that kind of plays in on these kind of areas that we look at. So if you're minded to be with students from all around the world and really kind of immerse yourself in different perspectives, ideas, opinions, cultures, then that's really what you're going to get from SOAS. And quite often with that comes a lot of discussion. And the thing about SOAS students is they don't always have the same opinions. They don't always have the same perspective. They don't always have the same ideas. But they're very willing to share and learn from others and just learn what other people think and why they think it. They might still not go away, agree. But that's the whole process of kind of putting it out there. And I think that's something really unique to us and unique to our programmes as well. Absolutely. Yeah. OK, well, we'll probably wrap it up there, but we will be sending out the recording of this session to you to this week, usually. And then what I did want to pop into the chat just quickly for you is the events page of our website. So like you say, a couple of you have already been to maybe an in-person event and are now here at this online event will have lots of events coming up throughout the year. So I just thought I'd put the link there. And it is a good idea to come to as many of these type of events as you can, both with SOAS and possibly with other universities.  And those students often think it's strange that I say that to them in terms of maybe go somewhere else and go to somebody else's open day and see what you think. I think for us, it's really important to have students who have seen what is out there for them and have decided that SOAS is the right fit rather than us being the only institution that you've heard from. But hopefully you will circle background to us afterwards. But yeah, I think it's a really good idea. And it's great that you've been to the in-person open days as well as the online ones. These online ones are great. And I think it makes it very university accessible for students both in the UK and outside of the UK. But SOAS is again, one of those universities where being on campus and having that experience is also quite vital. So I would say that if there is any chance of you getting down to the university, hopefully before you come and join us, then I would try and do that if I were you. And we do also run kind of off. We run on campus visits so you can kind of book into those as well through the same link that I've provided to you. So thank you all for attending. And thank you very much, Richard, for a great presentation and some lovely music as well. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Hope to see you soon.


Hi all, I'm Arancia, and in this video I will summarize the main results of our work on linear map vector commitments and their practical applications. Introduced by Catalano and Fiori in 2013, vector convenience schemes are cryptographic primitives where some entity called the prover can commit to potentially huge pieces of data in a shrunk mode. In a later step, our prover can convince other entities, called the verifiers, about some features on the vector. As introduced in the seminal work, vector commitments were aiming for position openings. That means that the prover can convince a verifier that some specific position in the vector stores an specific value. The more we are using vector commitments these days, the more properties we want from them. And in particular in our work, we start with the concept of linear map vector commitments introduced by Laiem-Malauge in 2019. And in these kind of schemes, instead of opening individual positions, our prover will open the vector to evaluations of linear maps in this vector. One observation we make is that if we have linear map vector commitments that have homomorphic commitments, proofs and openings, then they will also satisfy unbounded aggregation and update. Aggregation is the ability the prover has to take some proofs that have been already computed and create with them a new one that, while having the same size, can convince any verifier about all the three statements together in this case. And among the aggregation as we define it, is the ability the prover has to keep this process going by adding new proofs and aggregating in a potentially infinite process. But it's important here that both prover and verifier can keep track of the aggregation history or can access the aggregation history. Updateability captures the fact that we want our prover to be able to change some positions or one position in the vector. And then instead of having to create a new commitment and a new proof of opening of this vector or new proofs of all the statements our prover has already proven on this vector, what we want is that the prover can adapt or update both things, the commitment and any proof involving this position in a process that is much cheaper than computing them from scratch. This is cool because we have two constructions, one in the monomial and one in the Lagrange basis, both a linear map vector commitments that have all the homomorphic properties that we defined before. They are in the in the prime base setting, they have short proofs, fast verification, as I say before, satisfied all the monomorphic properties and thus they are updatable and unbounded aggregatable. But the bad thing with our proofs is that the prover is very slow, it's linear on the size of the vector. So what we do, we have a bunch of results that offer different provers and memory space trade-offs depending on the vector scheme that they are using. The rough idea, the intuition is that the prover can store the vector in a tree. Well, store the vector in the root of a tree and then every node's children will consist on two vectors of habit size containing the odd and the even positions respectively. The prover can choose where to stop this process, doesn't have to arrive to a tree that has only single elements in the leaves, it can have just smaller vectors which are chunks of the original one. And when the prover wants to make a proof of opening, let's say of an individual position, it has to first open the position in the chunk it corresponds to it. So this is a process that will be linear on the size of our chunk and not on the size of our vector anymore. And then it will have to prove that this chunk is indeed the correct subvector of the original vector. But these proofs of subvector openings, those can be pre-computed. And then what we offer our prover is the following trade-offs. Take M as a power of two and choose new and kappa such that two to the new plus kappa equals M. We enforce that M is a power of two. And then if you compute your tree having deep new, as a prover we have to pre-compute and start two to the new proofs that relate every level with the previous one. And then when you have to perform a proof of opening, you just go through a process that is linear on the size of your small chunks in this case, two to the kappa. That's all from me. Thank you very much.


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Looking down, it was hard to argue. Stage four cancer. When Miss Ruth had been asked her pain level earlier this morning, she had replied with no hesitation. Ten out of ten. I marked it down in the notes and felt my fair share of sadness for the old woman. My sister had said, her glowing eyes staring into mind, no one could see my sister anymore since her death, except for me. It's funny, when my sister was alive we weren't very close, but now she was with me nearly every second. Now she was always there to guide me and help me through the harder choices in life. Okay Sarah, I replied, feeling the syringe as far as it would go. If you work in healthcare, you know that upon each shift the narcotics are measured by the oncoming nurse. But there are ways around that. As her breathing slowed, I filled up the morphine with tap water and checked its level before the next shift would. No change. I knelt down by the old woman and held her hand. Was I sorry for my part in this? Absolutely not. She was enduring more pain than anyone should have to. And before you judge me, I want to ask you this.  Or would you take him to the vet and help him move on to the next life? Why should Miss Ruth be any different? I whispered into her ear. And she did. Her heart slowly stopping and a warm smile falling over her face. My only regret was that her family hadn't been here while she had passed. But it wasn't worth the risk. People didn't trust nurses and doctors like they used to. And there was more than a small chance that one of her family members might notice her increased dosage. This is how it had to be. And this is how it always had been. That night I took out the journal stowed under my bed and withdrew the small knife that was cradled inside it. I cut a small mark on the inside of my arm and used the fresh blood as ink to write a single mark in the back page of the leather. That made 65. Wow, was it really that many? Hey Sarah, I shouted into the adjoining room. Yes, brother. Would you believe we're at 65 already?  All those souls that had been given a reprieve from pain and a journey towards the light. I'm proud of you, Robert. Get some rest. My smile grew wider. I knew it wasn't good to be dependent on others for your feelings. But the thought of my family being proud of me, well, it filled my heart with joy. Sarah was the last one I had left.  Still, life is never without its challenges. Three days later, a new patient was brought under my care. Mr. Davis was a retired engineer and he had recently been diagnosed with a fast-acting form of pancreatic cancer. Get some rest. I whispered, filling up the syringe with morphine like I had done so many times earlier. But this time it didn't go as planned. Mr.  I don't want any medicine, he said. And I could tell he meant every word. Still, I had a job to do. It's just to dull the pain, I said, pushing the needle towards him.  He continued, his voice far too loud now to provide the concealed environment I needed. Okay, okay, sir, I replied, turning my back and checking the morphine level on the bottle. He gave me an angry, hazy look and then drifted off to sleep. That night when I was back at home, I prayed that she wouldn't find out. My hands locked together as I sat on my knees and looked over at the crucifixion painting my mother had insisted I receive after her death. God, please don't let her hurt me. When I finished my prayers, I did something I hadn't done since we were children. I locked the door. It wasn't more than five minutes later when my sister's voice could be heard in the outside hallway and the scratching started. God, why were her nails so long now? Or did they continue to grow after you died? I always forgot. You didn't do God's work today, did you, Robert? I pretended to be asleep. I pretended that I didn't hear her. But it never worked. Robert. The dead voice screamed. The old house's very foundations shaking violently with her anger. I couldn't, okay? He told me he didn't want any. And with that, the steady scratching on the door increased. Its only interruption, being the even worse, slams against the old oak frame as she desperately tried to get inside. I tried not to think of the punishment that awaited if she did. Horror filled me now as I could hear the hinges begin to creak and bend farther with each heavy jolt against it. Jumping out of bed, I braced my back against it. Please, Sarah. I called out gently. Tears beating to fill my eyes now. Please don't hurt me. And after a moment, the slamming did stop. A steady scratching took its place. That was somehow more gentle than before. I tried to hide my terror as I peeked through the small gap under the door. Her dead eyes were waiting for me. And they glowed like embers as I stared back. I know you do, Sarah.