S4E16 Nuclear weapons: deterrence or destruction?
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Hello, hello, hello listeners. Hi media stormers. Helena, tell us about that hen party you were going to go to. Oh my god, yes. Okay, so last weekend, went to the hen party. It was so much fun. But we went back to Bristol, which is where I did my undergrad. And we went to a club where we used to go out when we were at university, which is now like 10 years ago for me. Fun? Question mark? Okay. Okay.

I have never been so confronted with my own age. It was honestly horrifying. When we were like in the actual club bit, it was okay because it was dark. But when you were like outside of the smoking area bits and you could actually see these children, like, oh my God.

Oh my God. My friend was like, why are they all in fancy dress? No, that's just how Gen Z dress. And I was like, no, that's how they dress. Wow. Okay, so if there are like any Gen Z listeners listening, please explain to me if wearing skiing goggles in a club is the done thing these days. Like over the eyes? No, like on the head, like a fashion accessory. Because it would be so dark. Okay.

I could have used some ski goggles so I couldn't be confronted with the fact that I'm 31 and in a club. You know, if I was one of those students and I saw you, I'd be like, lady, what are you doing here? Oh my God, honestly, my jeans were way too high to be in that club. It was unacceptable. Okay, so Gen Z listeners, please explain to us your fashion choices. Please, I need help.

Well, speaking of listeners, we actually have a little request. Oh, yeah. So it's our last episode of this series. And of course, keep an eye out for bonus content, special episodes, and we'll keep you updated on more MediaStorm in the future. But yeah, for now, this is technically the end of series four. And as we come to the end of that series, we want to tell you what we're going to be doing in the meantime, which is...

raising the funds we need for the next series. And this is where we want to be completely honest with you guys. We want you to understand how MediaStorm works and the difficulties that we face trying to do this kind of journalism and the role you will play. Don't tune out now because I'm not just about to ask you for money. Yeah, don't worry about it. I mean, obviously, if somebody does have a lot of money they want to give us, please get in touch. But we're not asking you for money. No, this is bigger than that, right? Trying to fund this kind of journalism that is

I think inherently anti-sensationist is not an easy task. And for the last two series, we have raised funds through like ethical journalism grants and funders who believe in what we do. But we always said we don't want to keep taking that money unless we can see ourselves growing to the scale at which we can

pay for ourselves through the sort of standard podcast advertising model. To get to that scale, we need to be about three times the size we are. That's the reality. So the first thing we want to ask is those of you who are with us week by week, we need all of you to send MediaStorm to three people you genuinely think will like us and value us and stay with us.

And I realize as I'm saying that it is our series finale, so we're not going to be releasing weekly. So choose your favorite episode from our back catalog and send it to three people who will care.

But the other thing we really need from you is a little help knowing our worth, right? We live in a society where worth is assigned based on profit and we are not creating profit at this time. We're creating something else. We know why we do what we do. We know that profit does not do good things for the news, but it sometimes gets a bit wary, constantly justifying that.

And so as we head into meetings with our funders, we would love to have from you testimonies like emails telling them why we're worth continuing to support, continuing to help grow. So, yeah, if you love MediaStorm, if you're a regular listener or you just love a particular episode, please email us at mediastormpodcast at gmail.com. And just tell us why. It doesn't have to be long. A few lines, please.

Just tell us why you love us. We need it. We need your validation. We need your validation. No, but really, we just, for all of those reasons outlined. Yeah, we really appreciate it. So that's our update. But what else is happening in the world?

Lebanon is under deadly Israeli bombardment as civilians were forced to flee their homes in the south. The late Harrods owner, Mohammed Al-Fayed, has been accused of sexual assault and rape by more than 20 women. And Labour Party conference headed to Liverpool, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised change and national renewal in his key speech.

Didn't he also say something else in his key speech that we might want to talk about? Yeah, I mean, there's probably only one thing people will actually remember from it, and that's this. I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The return of the sausages, the hostages.

It's so bad. It's so bad. I can't not look at it. I mean, but I don't know because I've seen it already being memefied, you know, like he said sausages, not hostages and people being like, that was the worst speech ever. But like, I don't know whether this is something that should be memefied. Like, should we not be laughing right now? It's such a serious topic and...

Oh, it's just so bad. It's so bad. Well, we've seen that everywhere. Anything that we haven't seen in the news? OK, yes, the Labour conference has been widely reported. But something the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in her speech did actually remind me of a media storm. Tell me more. Yvette Cooper began her speech by talking about youth violence and...

announced as an ambition to halve knife crime in a decade, as well as the Labour government's plans for a ban on so-called ninja swords. Ninja swords? I thought it was zombie knives that were being banned. Why are we naming all of these weapons after movie villains? I don't know, maybe because they're terrifying?

Zombie knives are defined as weapons with blades that are more than eight inches long, usually with a serrated cutting edge. That's the kind of thing you see in zombie movies or TV shows. And you're right. On Tuesday, a new law came into place that closed a loophole, meaning it's now an imprisonable offence to own, make, transport or sell these knives and machetes in England and Wales.

Problem solved? Yeah. Not exactly. Dr. Olamide Wol Madariola is the father of 17-year-old Malcolm Mide Madariola, who was murdered with a zombie knife in November 2018. And he says that this law is better late than never, but he's worried a black market for zombie knives will erupt. And that's why he's

and that overall, this ban is a starting point, not an end point. Right, ultimately, there are so many legal knives out there that if someone really wants to commit,

knife violence, there are many ways for them to do that. Exactly. So Patrick Green, the CEO of the knife crime charity, the Benkin Zeller Trust, told Sky News this week, what we're fearful of is having finally banned zombie knives on the third attempt, that it will just displace the problem. And those who are intent on getting these knives will simply look for the next gruesome knife to buy.

We know that ninja swords are still available, so we fear the problem will just move up the step rather than being solved. And this is likely why Yvette Cooper also mentioned a ban on ninja swords in her speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday. This is a lot of talk about weapons and not a lot of talk about why kids have these weapons. And I realise this is sounding a bit

NRA, National Rifle Association, like I hear these arguments from hardcore gun nuts. I'm not saying that banning the weapons is a bad thing. It's a starting point, but it's tackling a symptom, not a cause.

And this is what makes it a media storm. So I actually think Yvette Cooper's speech was very representative of the issue as we see it in the media. She had many lines about weapons and she had one line about opening new youth hubs which will steer children in the right direction. So the proportion is off. The solutions focused journalism on the topic of knife crime is basically non-existent.

You quoted a father of the 17-year-old who'd been stabbed. Did you read that interview in the mainstream media? Yes, that was on the BBC. So when knife crime re-enters our news cycle, whether it's a particularly horrifying case or a government proposal, we sometimes hear from grieving parents. And these pleas from parents are so important. But they're not.

they can only go so far. And to me, what's missing is hearing from the people in these communities who are affected by knife crime, who maybe were kids who picked up a knife or got hurt by a knife and survived, who have the knowledge, the actual first-hand experience, and can really tell us about what would have truly stopped them from having picked up a knife in the first place. Definitely. Yeah.

We know that it's very unlikely that people just pick up knives and decide to stab someone. It comes from a feeling of disempowerment, lack of protection, lack of mentorship, much more. We also know that early intervention, youth empowerment, investing in young people, better education and awareness in the curriculum, these are things that actually help to solve the problem. So why aren't we hearing about it? It's a good question. Guess we'll have to do a MediaStorm episode on it one day.

Okay, I've got one.

The front page of The Telegraph on Monday had this headline: "1 million people wrongly classed as too sick to work." It states that according to analysis, up to a million people have been wrongly classed as too sick to work when they are willing and able to get a job. The study by the Centre for Social Justice found that joblessness in Britain is nearly twice as high as official figures suggest, owing to a surge in so-called "hidden unemployment."

What on earth is hidden unemployment? Hidden unemployment refers to people who want a job and are capable of doing one, but who are not actively looking for work and are therefore not counted in the official unemployment rate. The study found that at least 800,000 people were missing from the headline unemployment rate and that many of them are likely stuck on long-term sickness benefits. So...

If this is true, and if up to a million people have been wrongly categorized as too sick to work when they're willing and able to get a job, I guess the question I'd ask is why? Like, why are they on long-term sickness benefits? That's the right question. And the Telegraph basically suggests it's because, firstly, the current benefit system doesn't have the right incentives for people to even start looking for a job. So the implication there is, you know, benefits are too generous. And some people who are

on them are cheating the system. And secondly, the Telegraph suggests many people in this group of hidden unemployment lived in areas that have been left behind. Okay, what's an example of an area that has been left behind? Deindustrialised areas, seaside towns and inner cities. They also throw a

casual mention of migrants in there. Oh, wouldn't be a Telegraph article without it. Yeah, they say many forgotten seaside towns were now being used to house recently arrived migrants, which was exacerbating the concentration of unemployed and inactive people in certain parts of the country.

Right. So they say that more people than ever are on this long term sickness benefit because of those reasons. Too many health benefits being given out or it's just easier to have benefits and or it's probably a migrant's fault. But it's fair to say that more people than ever are on sickness benefits, right? Yes.

That is true. More British people are claiming working age health related benefits than before COVID. That's true in lots of countries, but it's especially true in the UK.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says one in 10 adults of working age are now on sickness benefits. And this was splashed on the Telegraph front page. But it might not be for the reasons they've given. And this is where I want to draw your attention to an academic paper that was summarized in The Conversation. And it calls the Telegraph's reasons into question. Ooh.

Ooh, okay, I'm intrigued now. So what's really new about this and what's been missed is that if you look at wider welfare spending, spending on health-related benefits has gone up, but spending on other working age benefits has gone down. And that's to do with policy restricting those benefits. So basically it's getting harder and harder to survive on benefits unless you're classified as having a health condition or disability.

So is the author of this research saying that people are lying to get sick benefits? No, it's actually...

Not saying that. The researcher actually points out that most claimants do have genuine health conditions. They just may not have claimed health-related benefits in the past. But the issue is the inadequacy of other benefits. Restrictions on other benefits mean people who need welfare support are having to classify themselves as disabled to get anything. And that in turn makes it harder to find work and so therefore we're seeing more people out of work.

Now, if this is true, the problem isn't overly generous health benefits. If you actually compare the amount England and Wales spend on disability-related benefits, it's much less than other welfare countries. But what's interesting is that other countries mostly haven't seen this sharp rise in self-reported disability like we have in the UK. And the thing that makes us different is the restraints.

restrictions placed on other benefits. The other point I'd make about the Telegraph headline is that it implies this is a problem now. This is like a problem we're seeing under the current administration. Actually, the hidden...

unemployment figures being exposed date back to 2022. Oh, so the Tory government? Yes. Ah. So this is a problem that we saw under Tory austerity. I mean, we might now be entering a chapter of Labour austerity, as it looks, but either way, that is buried in the article.

Right, so this article plays into partisan tropes and demonises those people on benefits rather than the wider social and systemic issues. Again, kind of similar to the knife crime story, symptom, not cause. Exactly.

Talking about crucial context missed, you've reminded me of a media storm that made me fume. Oh man, tell me. So I saw this story reported in LBC, but I looked up afterwards it was also in The Mirror, Essex Live, The Daily Express. Headlines read, urgent manhunt launched after woman raped in Asda car park in 4am attack.

Now, this is a horrible story about a victim who reported being assaulted at the bottom of the slope in the Asda car park in the Eastgate Centre on September 22nd. And this is mostly a story to alert the public and ask people to check their dashcam footage if they were in the area at the time. Right. So what is it that you're fuming about? Well, Essex police gave a statement.

It said, incidents like this are rare, but I know this will cause concern for anyone who lives or works in the area and understand that concern. There'll be increased visible presence in the area and specialist detectives and staff are working tirelessly to identify the man responsible. Okay, okay. I get why you're angry. We've done so many episodes about gender-based violence, misogyny, rape justice, to know this is...

Isn't rare. Exactly. And listen, I understand like Essex Police wants to reassure its community, but I'm almost actually less annoyed with the Essex Police statement in itself. I'm more annoyed with the media who printed their statement without adding any context.

Because rape is not rare. We know this globally, but it remains the same locally. The number of rape and sexual assault cases reported has gone up by 140% in Essex over the past eight years. Then nationally, one in 30 women are raped or sexually assaulted every year in England and Wales. And five in six women who are raped don't report it to the police. If we learn anything from our recent episode, which was called Violence Against Women is a Man's Problem,

To effectively tackle male violence and gender-based violence, we have to recognise the scale and commonality of these crimes. Exactly. And the media has a duty to point to this. Of course, print the police statement. You're going to do that. It's important. But then contextualise the issue. Add the relevant statistics. Point to helplines. Point to solutions. None of the articles I read on this story had done anything to question the Essex police statement...

And for anyone reading those kinds of articles, remember, if there's no context, be cautious. And for anyone writing them, zooming out and framing the act of violence in the systemic context of gender-based violence is so important because often, even if it's an isolated incident, you also hear that from police statements, isolated incidents, or rare in a police context, it's not an isolated figure in terms of how prevalent gender-based violence is.

Gender-based violence is national. It's not a personal problem. And look, I mean, I know that you said, I understand why police would want to reassure women. This is rare. But it's just, it is so patronising. You know, like, the most important thing here is to reassure women there's nothing to worry about. We know there is. Like, thanks for the paternalistic pat on the shoulder. Maybe now stop trivialising the issue and gaslighting us in the process. Join me in my rage. Yes, fuck it, you've seen it.

You've sucked me in. You've sucked me in. Look, language matters. To allow the label of rare to be applied here is dangerous. Okay, finally, my last media storm before we move on to our main topic. I just...

Felt like pointing out some of the ridiculous things that still get printed in our media. Boris Johnson this week wrote one of the most ridiculous articles I've seen in a while. That's saying something. Is Boris Johnson relevant again? He's trying to make himself. In the Daily Mail, here's the headline. Working from home may be okay for the older generation, but for the Bridget Joneses of today, it's a sham and a snare. And they'll never meet their Mr. Darcy. Are

Are you making this up? Your face? No, you're like trying to catch me out on... No, no, no. Does that actually happen? No. So in the article, Boris Johnson claimed that Bridget Jones, who works as a publicity assistant at a publishing company, had a habitat where she could be sure of finding breeding partners, adding that the Bridget Joneses of today will never meet their Mr. Darcy if they work from home.

Bridget Jones didn't meet Mr. Darcy at work. Yes, exactly. Because she met the other one, the shit one. So many people had to point out that she didn't meet Mr. Darcy at the office. She met him at his mum's. They used to run around naked together around a paddling pool as kids. Exactly. It was like the turkey party or whatever. Everyone knows that. And also, yeah, she didn't meet Mr. Darcy, but she did meet her highly inappropriate and toxic boss. Yeah.

So, so much for Daily Mail levels of fact-checking. You think you would learn, if printing Boris Johnson, how necessary that is? Didn't he get fired from his first journalist job for fabricating a quote? Yeah, exactly. He was sacked by The Times over inaccuracies in his work, like back in the 80s. Nothing changes. But when it comes to Bridget Jones, I will not let this slide. He will not let lies get through this net. Also, what made me laugh is that

Other people pointed out that not only did she not meet her breeding partner at work, but she also got sexually assaulted in like every job she ever had. But that's the thing. I mean, the things that we might call sexual assaulting is probably what Boris Johnson would call great way to find a breeding partner. Yeah. Also, last thing I'll say about this. How bored are you to reignite the working from home debate? It must be over by now.

Right, on to our main story for the episode. I imagine it's not about working from home. Today is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. And nuclear weapons are being discussed at the UN General Assembly in New York. But on the topic of eliminating nuclear weapons, you are unlikely to see very much. At least if you're tuning in from the UK. The same is broadly true if you're tuning in from the US.

But for audiences based in Germany or Australia, and certainly those of you in New Zealand, we know you're out there, by the way, thanks to our freaky analytics where we can stalk your locations. Not your houses, just the countries you're from. Then denuclearization probably is part of your coverage.

We are recording from one of the world's nine nuclear states. We have a national media that toes the official government position very closely. Nuclear weapons, or rather the nuclear deterrent, is necessary and good. We actually have nuclear weapons to thank for the peace that has upheld since the first and last nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War. If peace is how you would describe the

the current state of the world. Of late, however, the situation has become a bit more fraught.

Thanks to some wonderful men like Putin in Russia, who since invading Ukraine has issued veiled threats about waging nuclear warfare to keep NATO at bay while developing nuclear weapons in Belarus. Or Kim Jong-un in North Korea, who has rapidly modernized the country's nuclear arsenal and who also has a taste for launching high-profile missile tests, including long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

Or, of course, Donald Trump, who, during his term as US president, withdrew the US from a number of nuclear arms control treaties, including the Iran nuclear deal, since which time Iran has visibly been developing its nuclear technologies.

Given the doomsaying nature of nuclear news over this past five, ten years, you might think we'd have a more diverse debate about whether nuclear weapons are actually a good thing. But we don't. We get a lot more coverage about using nukes than getting rid of them. Opinion pieces are locked into Cold War thinking that nuclear gridlock is the only way and we must respond to strength with strength.

So today we ask, really, why does our media insist nuclear weapons are the only way? And what does that mean? We're not being told. Brace yourselves for our scariest media storm yet.

Well,

Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's MediaStorm. Nuclear weapons. Is there really no other way?

♪♪♪

Welcome to the MediaStorm Studio. Our first guest is a physicist and winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. He's a member of the governing body of the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

ICANN, and former president of its founding group, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which is itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. That's a few more Nobel Prizes than we've got to our name. So thank you for joining us, Dr. Ira Helfand. Pleasure to be with you today.

Our second guest is a writer and activist who has written extensively about the intersections of culture, politics and social issues, authoring several books, including the long-selling Hip Revolution in Japan. Welcome to MediaStorm, Yumiko Sakuma. Thank you for having me. Nuclear weapons have become more and more present in global news since warfare broke out in Ukraine and the Middle East.

But while the quantity of coverage has changed, the nature of that coverage and its strong geographic bias has not. Wherever you're listening from, you likely grew up with a set idea given to you about whether or not nuclear weapons mean peace or destruction. In nuclear powers like the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, coverage of nuclear weapons focuses on them being a geopolitical necessity.

Russian state media presents them as a symbol of national strength against NATO, while the US, UK and France describe them as a duty to allies and necessary to keep other aggressive states at bay. Anti-nuclear voices are ignored or dismissed as naive and unrealistic or even dangerous in themselves.

Chinese media is more restrained, portraying their nuclear weapons as a defence strategy in line with the government's no-first-use nuclear policy. That's quite different to UK journalists who demand every incoming prime minister to say out loud that they would push the nuclear button. And then there are countries pursuing nuclear weapons like North Korea and Iran. Media in both is either controlled or heavily influenced by the state.

North Korea portrays nuclear weapons as patriotic achievements that are essential for the regime's survival and respect on the international stage. Iranian media emphasises the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme and the hypocrisy of Western powers demanding other countries to disarm while they do not. And then you have countries under nuclear umbrellas like Japan or South Korea. This means they don't have their own weapons but rely on allies' weapons to protect them from nearby threats.

Japan is the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack and its media therefore focuses frequently on disarmament. But this position is complicated by their fear of nearby North Korea's nuclear aggression. And finally, there are non-nuclear pro-disarmament countries like Austria or Norway or New Zealand whose media is often staunchly anti-nuclear and critical of nuclear powers like the UK, especially in times like this when global tensions run high.

So this overview gives a sense of a few things. Firstly, how geopolitically biased journalists often are, even in countries with a free press, and how many different positions there are on the nuclear debate, as well as how little most of us see of them.

We're going to turn to our guest now. Ira, reflecting on media coverage in the U.S., where you're tuning in from, do you see any issues with how nuclear weapons are reported on? Several issues. Firstly, the coverage is really quite inadequate to the scope of the threat that we're facing. Secondly, the conversation about nuclear weapons takes place in abstract terms. A nuclear war in which hundreds of millions of people will die is called a nuclear exchange.

as though some kind of a commercial transaction. The reality of nuclear war, the medical consequences, the humanitarian impact is almost never discussed. And the conversation in the media kind of mirrors the conversation that takes place at the government level when diplomats sit down to negotiate about nuclear weapons. It's like they're playing some game of chess. You know, it's all very abstract, very divorced from reality. And that enables the conversation to go in a certain direction. When you start the conversation,

by describing what is going to happen when these weapons are used, you get a very different conversation.

You know, when you say that they're abstract, I think maybe this, doing this podcast, is possibly the first time I've actually thought about where are these weapons? Where are they stored? They're actually here in this country. Are they being stored correctly? And when we do, it's quite scary. You know, they are actually somewhere. It's almost too scary to think about. Yumiko, how about media coverage of nuclear weapons in Japan? I imagine it's quite different.

So every August in Japan, ceremonies are held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombs, which provide us with opportunities to talk about the role that Japan could potentially play as the only country to have suffered the casualty of atomic bombings.

This year, there was an interesting development as the mayor of the city of Nagasaki refused to invite the Israeli ambassador to Japan as a result of nuclear weapons, which prompted all these ambassadors to cancel their attendance.

But the frequency of us hearing about North Korea's ambition or China's threat is more and more. So obviously, the conservative government uses that to father their argument to expand military capabilities. The fact remains that Japan has not ratified the Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

See, the UK media defers almost unquestionably to the narrative that nukes are here to stay and that no alternative exists. But they do. Alternatives like the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons legally binding an international agreement signed by 92 countries.

But this treaty has not had a single mention by the BBC or the New York Times, for that matter, for four years, despite nuclear warfare generating thousands upon thousands of articles in that time. And yet...

Polling in the UK shows almost 40% of Brits support joining the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which would mean, yes, getting rid of our nuclear weapons. And even among the 40% of Brits who support owning nuclear weapons, most want a less aggressive stance. But the media omits these predictions.

perspectives completely. It is not due impartiality. Instead, our media unanimously evoke a fundamental belief that nuclear deterrence is necessary. It's the reason that we haven't yet had World War III. Ira, how do you respond to that view? First of all, this idea that deterrence guarantees that we're going to be safe and prevents World War III

There's no evidence for this. This is an assertion that's made and it's become accepted almost as a matter of religious dogma. You start to talk to a politician about getting rid of nuclear weapons, they throw up their hands in horror, but what about nuclear deterrence? We have come close to nuclear war at least six times that we know about.

literally within minutes of nuclear war, usually because either Washington or Moscow thought the other side had launched an attack. On each of these occasions, deterrence failed. The country that believed it was under attack began the preparations to launch its nuclear arsenal. We have survived this far into the nuclear weapons era, not because deterrence works, because we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. And we're not going to be lucky forever.

Essentially, the policy of the nuclear-armed states is nothing more than a hope for continued perpetual good luck. They know that we've almost had nuclear war repeatedly. They know how close we've come. It's interesting. They tell people who advocate the abolition of nuclear weapons that we're naive and unrealistic. And I think they're the ones who live in a fantasy world. If they think that we can continue to maintain these gigantic nuclear arsenals forever and expect nothing's ever going to go wrong.

I think the other thing I'd ask is, we're told that we have nuclear weapons because of nuclear deterrence. Is it even all about nuclear deterrence? Well, I think it's not. I think that is part of it, but it's far beyond that. The nuclear powers do not have the nuclear arsenals solely to deter other countries with nuclear weapons from attacking them. There are extensive war fighting plans for these weapons.

And you can see the way the U.S. has threatened countries that don't have nuclear weapons in the past, certainly the way Russia is threatening to use its nuclear arsenal to defend its aggression in Ukraine. The nuclear powers use these weapons all the time. They don't blow them up over other country cities, but they use them to bully the world. So that's one aspect of the deterrence thing that we need to be aware of. This is not the sole reason or possibly not even the main reason why nuclear weapon states have them.

Yumiko, I mean, do you have any response to the nuclear deterrent argument? Yes. I don't know...

how anybody could trust some of the world leaders' ability to make the right decisions for us. You know, our ability to choose the right leaders for us. That's my take on that. That's a great point, Yamiko. You know, the whole idea of deterrence, there are certain assumptions built into this. One is that the technology is going to work all the time, but we know that doesn't happen.

Secondly, that world leaders will be getting perfect intelligence all the time. And we know that half the time they don't know what's going on in these crisis situations, understandably. And finally, that the decision makers will always be rational people who make careful, thought out, sound decisions. But we have a bunch of characters in charge of nuclear arsenals today who are not known for their level headedness and their careful thinking on their lack of impulsivity.

So the whole intellectual underpinnings of deterrence really don't exist. It's just, you know, an emperor with no clothes. It is scary and it's just so surprising that we don't have more of a conversation about it. I wonder if any of the apparent bias in our media is the result of deliberate secrecy around nuclear weapons. Is it to do with genuine national security concerns or is it something more problematic than that?

Well, it's probably a combination of several things. I think there are legitimate national security concerns that enter into this, but a desire to maintain support for the nuclear enterprise also plays a huge role. One of the better examples comes from a few years ago, but in the 60s, the BBC made this wonderful documentary, The War Game, which was one of the most powerful depictions of nuclear war that's ever been made. And I think it had one screening and then the BBC pulled it

Because they were afraid it was going to undermine British public support for the evolving UK nuclear arsenal. And I think that's a big part of what goes on. Government does not want people to understand the enormity of the danger that they're living under. Because if people did understand this, they'd demand government leaders work to get rid of these weapons instead of building more of them.

So we've looked at what the media does report on. Now let's look at what they don't report on. One of the key things missing from the media is the human story of nuclear warfare. The imagery used in articles and on TV paints a highly militarised and abstract picture, mostly showing nuclear weapons being assembled and pointed upwards or mushroom clouds rather than the human devastation on the ground.

And human voices are missing too, people who are personally affected rather than politically powerful. We should be listening to communities that have been most affected by nuclear weapons,

Those who have suffered the impact of nuclear test sites like in Fiji or actual nuclear warfare like Japan. I think a recent media example that comes to mind is the Oppenheimer movie because this drew criticism after its release last July for not giving a voice to the victims of nuclear weapons.

The movie mentioned the number of Japanese people killed by the atomic bombs, but didn't show the physical effect of the weapons on their human victims. It told the story of the first US nuclear test, but it made no mention of the downwinders, the victims of fallout from US nuclear testing. Now Christopher Nolan, the director, said that this is to maintain subjectivity since Oppenheimer himself didn't witness these things.

Yumiko, did you observe any anger about the Oppenheimer movie in Japan? Yes, definitely. Especially when Barbie and Oppenheimer were released practically at the same time and we saw the explosion of Oppenheimer memes that placed Barbie characters in front of the iconic mushroom cloud. And I remember Japanese Twitter exploding

which is totally understandable. You know, when you see very abstract pictures of the explosion and not talk about the devastation of nuclear atomic bombs, I feel like we do actively avoid talking about real human sufferings as a result of nuclear weapons. I mean, something notable to me about that is

is that I wasn't really aware of this backlash from Japanese audiences because it didn't appear in Western news, despite Oppenheimer and Barbie, like you mentioned, dominating headlines at the time. But then maybe I shouldn't be surprised because survivor voices are missing all over our media. Yumeko, maybe you can help us fill in the gaps. What might those survivor voices tell us that we don't get to hear or see?

I grew up in Japan and I was exposed to pop culture, movies, documentaries about what the real sufferings were like. When you go to places like Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, it will tell you not only about severe injuries and burns people suffer immediately after the bomb explosion, but also about midterm to long-term illnesses and disabilities people endure for decades.

but you know it takes people to go to the museum to see the real thing and you know I suspect that for most people it's an abstract concept. Yeah I agree it was very abstract to me until I set foot in that museum I have to say. Have you been to Hiroshima? Yeah so I went as a teenager as well and I actually remember feeling I felt anger and that felt out of place because what's so remarkable about Hiroshima is it is not coloured by anger it's

Soul message is peace. It does not feed into a cycle of vengeful justice, violence, justice. There is only one takeaway from the horrors that happened here, and that is peace and nuclear disarmament. But the reason I felt angry was because I had just learned about...

the nuclear debate in school and it had been given to me as this deterrence is necessary and there had been no sense of the other side of the story and I just, I actually felt really robbed by our education system.

Ira, I wonder, do you agree that it's important to represent the human impact that nuclear weapons have had with more survivor voices? I think understanding the human impact is the most important thing that we need to know. What happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these are very important warnings to us of what these weapons can do. The flip side of that is that they actually don't begin to prepare us for what's going to happen today.

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT, an enormous explosion by conventional standards. The bomb at Nagasaki was 22 kilotons. But the bombs in the arsenals today are much bigger than that. 10, 15, perhaps 20 or even more nuclear warheads, each of which

is six to 50 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. And the destruction that they would cause is literally beyond our imagination. Within a thousandth of a second of the detonation of that bomb, a fireball forms that reaches out for two miles in every direction, four miles across. Within that area, everything is vaporized. The buildings, the trees, the people, the upper level of the earth disappears.

to a distance of four miles, I should probably do this in kilometers, to a distance of six kilometers in every direction. The explosion generates winds greater than a thousand miles per hour to a distance of six miles, nine kilometers in every direction. The heat is so intense that automobiles melt. And to a distance of 16 miles, 25 kilometers in every direction. The heat is so intense that everything flammable burns.

Wood, plastic, gasoline, heating oil, cloth, paper, it just all ignites. And you get hundreds of thousands of fires, which in about a half an hour's time coalesce into a firestorm. All the oxygen is consumed and every living thing dies. The people who survived this first day would be living in a world we can't imagine. There'd be no cell phones, no electric grid, no internet, no food distribution system, no public health system. There'd be no law and order.

And most of the people in the countries that fought this war that survived the first day would succumb over the coming months to radiation exposure, to hunger, to epidemic disease, to exposure from the elements.

And what I've been describing so far, these are just the effects in the countries that fight the war. But a war between the United States and Russia puts 150 million tons of soot in the upper atmosphere from all the fires. And that blocks out the sun. And it drops temperatures across the planet colder than we've seen on this planet since the last ice age. And under those conditions, all the ecosystems which have evolved since the last ice age will collapse. Food production across the entire planet will stop. And the vast majority of the human race will starve to death.

A study that was published in 2022 showed that a war between the United States and Russia would kill in the first two years between five and six billion people, three quarters of the human race. And just one more point, that study also showed that if India and Pakistan, much smaller countries in terms of the nuclear arsenals, go to war, that war would kill 100 billion people in South Asia,

but it would also put enough soot into the atmosphere to cause climate disruption worldwide. Not as severe as a war between the United States and Russia, but bad enough to cause a famine that would kill 2 billion people worldwide. Either of these scenarios means the end of human civilization. The US-Russia war might mean the extinction of our species, but they both mean the end of civilization as we know it. This reality needs to be at the heart of the conversation about nuclear weapons.

What conceivable benefit that they might confer on any regime is worth running this risk. It's a moment to recover. Ira, what was the name of this study? The study on nuclear famine was led by a professor at Rutgers in the United States named Lily Shah, XIA-CIA.

It was published in August of 2022. Because I have not heard these findings before, and I wonder, was this study published in the mainstream media? Did it get the press coverage that it deserved? No, nowhere near the attention that it should have received. I mean, this has the most profound possible implications

for government policy in countries across the world. And basically it was ignored. And it's part of this whole refusal to accept this danger. When the very first study about nuclear famine came out in 2012, we submitted an op-ed to the New York Times. It was rejected. On the day it was rejected, the New York Times instead ran an op-ed about the swimming skills of polar bears.

And I have to say, I kind of lost it. You're not supposed to do this, but I sent an email back to the op-ed editor and said, basically, what's wrong with you? And he wrote back and said, well, if at some time in the future, the danger of nuclear war is greater, we would consider publishing an editorial about this. This is a smart guy. I assume he's running the op-ed page of the New York Times.

And just this profound ignorance. It's gotten a little bit better in the last year. The New York Times, for example, has a series this year called At the Brink. They advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons, which is quite remarkable considering how they have dismissed such advocacy in the past.

But the unnerving thing is, the New York Times op-ed editor said to you, oh, if there's a time in the future when nuclear warfare feels like more of a real threat, maybe we'll start publishing this stuff. So I guess we've hit that time. It's also like, I don't think you're going to have time to publish that if it has come to that time. Are you going to do it when the bombs start falling? Yeah, publish the op-ed then. Here's an op-ed. That'll help.

I mean, something else missing from media reporting, aside from everything you've pointed out so far, is the countless hidden dangers to do with the production, storage and testing of nuclear weapons that our country is vulnerable to every day.

One story that should be all over the UK press right now is the battle for compensation by UK veterans who believe their current cancers were caused by British nuclear testing, to which 20,000 servicemen were exposed in Australia and the South Pacific in the 50s and 60s. And not to mention the locals from these communities. Yeah. Yumiko, it's where we turn to you.

Okinawa Island in Japan still hosts over 20,000 US military personnel since being occupied at the end of the Second World War and it was once used by the US to store 1,200 nuclear warheads.

Locals on Okinawa have reported poisonings from various weapons tests. And one time in 1965, I couldn't quite believe this when I read it, an American plane accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb in the sea, just, you know, 70 miles from the island.

I wonder if international audiences should be more aware of what is happening in overseas military bases like Okinawa that are occupied by our governments. Yes, definitely. I agree with that. You know, to this day, Okinawa ends up with the shitty end of the stick.

You know, between contamination of the water and also all these sexual assaults, the list goes on. Do you mean sexual assault by U.S. soldiers? U.S. servicemen that have been covered up. There was a recent trial of a serviceman who was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor.

There has to be so many more cases that needs to be uncovered. I also think of another example regarding Rich Alconis. He was a service member as well. He was involved in a car accident that killed two Japanese civilians, and he was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. His release was negotiated by Kamala Harris.

And this was welcomed by the US media, which I thought was, you know, a huge double standard. Why are we not talking about two innocent civilians' deaths?

I definitely see double standard in Western and some Japanese media when they talk about nuclear weapon situation in the context of U.S. and Western countries being a good guy and that countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia, you know, being the bad guys.

Yeah, I mean, it just shows there's so many layers of intersectionality and colonial aspects to this nuclear debate that we're not seeing in our media at all. Another side of the story we don't see reported much is the cost of nuclear weapons to the taxpayer. And this is probably partly because, as we've learned firsthand, it's pretty hard to keep track of them.

The UK is currently spending £30 to £40 billion updating its Trident nuclear programme, which is estimated to have cost over £100 billion since it began. In addition to this is the cost of simply maintaining the nuclear weapons that we've already got. That's about £3 billion in the UK each year at the moment. The US's annual costs are estimated at $50 to $60 billion today.

Their 10-year projected cost had to be revised up from $494 billion to $634 billion because these things always go over budget. We sometimes hear discussions about the job losses that would come from denuclearisation, but we never hear about the big players. The truth is, fuelling the arms race is a very profitable game for some.

Ira, can you tell us a bit about who profits from nuclear armament and why we don't see that reported in the press? There are a handful of corporations that do the vast majority of the contracting for nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in the United States, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Earthup Grumman. And they receive enormous amounts of money and perhaps more importantly, they spend enormous amounts of money on lobbying.

And the whole debate about nuclear policy is profoundly corrupted by this lobbying effort. The estimates are tens of millions of dollars spent lobbying the U.S. Congress.

every year to try to make sure that these weapons systems continue to be procured. Obviously, the peace movement does not have that kind of money. And so you get this very unlevel playing field and you don't have an honest conversation about do nuclear weapons make sense or not? Because the whole conversation takes place in this context of all this money flowing into the lobbying effort.

I think that a problem with our coverage is that it gives me this pre-written narrative about nuclear warfare, and I don't have a say in it. But I'm starting to feel from this discussion that is a deliberate strategy. People who disagree have been systemically disempowered and disengaged by this highly abstract, militarized, depersonalized, one-sided discussion. But the scary thing is,

if I ask myself, do I feel safe? Do I actually feel like no nuclear weapons will be dropped in my lifetime? I don't think I do. You're shaking your head, Helena. I don't now. Yeah. I don't feel like that's not going to happen.

future nuclear violence at some point in humanity's existence it feels inevitable and yet at the same time I also don't feel like I have any say in the matter because I'm not aware of alternatives that I can be campaigning for. A part of me still has internalized that idea that really you know it is impossible to denuclearize the deterrence as necessary but there is a very clear precedent for this kind of disarmament process.

We have banned chemical warfare. We have not allowed humans to just pursue scientific knowledge at all costs. After the First World War, there were various international protocols brought in to prohibit chemical warfare worldwide. And our media adheres as unquestioningly to that as they do to the need for nuclear weapons. Absolutely.

Fortunately, as you two demonstrate, there are alternative visions for our future. Ira, starting with you, can you share with our listeners and with me some of the solutions that aren't mentioned in our media and how we can be part of them?

If we're going to change the nuclear policy of the nuclear weapon states, I think we need to have a multi-tiered approach. We need to try to educate the decision makers, the people in government, because frankly, they don't know what's going to happen if their own weapons are used in many cases. That effort to reach the decision makers is important, but we know that government leaders tend not to be leaders. They tend to follow, in many cases, what the public is demanding of them. We need to build a movement of citizens who are demanding a change in policy.

And there's a historical precedent for this. In the 1980s, there was a gigantic anti-nuclear movement in Japan, in Europe, in the United States, even in the Soviet Union. And it had a huge impact on the decision-making that was made then to end the Cold War arms race. We need to recreate that.

Internationally, my organization, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, in 2007 launched the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, ICANN, specifically to try to achieve a treaty that would prohibit, that would ban nuclear weapons.

We mobilized civil society all around the world and in just 10 years secured the adoption of that treaty at the UN in 2017. So far, 73 countries have ratified the treaty. Three more ratified it yesterday. 98 countries have signed the treaty, but we need to get the countries that haven't come on board yet to do that. So, for example, in the United Kingdom, there is a local branch of the ICANN campaign, ICANN UK. Here in the United States, we've started something called Back from the Brink,

I mean, I would refer people to our websites. The ICANN website is icannw.org. The IPPNW, the International Physicians website is ippnw.org. And the Back from the Brink campaign in the United States is preventnuclearwar.org.

I just want to reiterate something you said there, which is that this week, three more countries ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We have not seen a headline on that. No. But that is definitely a headline I like. And, you know, just a final thought about this.

To the extent that we do understand nuclear war, it seems sometimes totally overwhelming. And I think a lot of people say, well, what can I do about this? And I think it's important for us to remember, no one of us is expected to solve this all by ourself. But on the other hand, each one of us does need to do that part of the job, which is ours to do. If each one of us does our part of the job, I think the job's going to get done.

It's very scary. We do need to be afraid because if we're not afraid, we're not going to pay attention to the issue. But we also need to understand this is under our control. Nuclear weapons aren't a force of nature. We made these. We know how to take them apart. We need to do it. Thank you so much. Yumiko, do you have any ideas about how listeners can help? And also tell us where people can follow you and your work.

Yes, so keep talking about it, right? We are living in a time where survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are leaving us one by one. And I see a lot of work being done

being done by younger activists, they keep talking about the indescribable human sufferings that they heard from their grandparents and their parents. You know, even though it's an abstract concept,

we have a pretty good idea what radiation can do, right? I have this vase that was deformed by the blast and it's a replica of it from a project called DTP. Just so listeners can have a picture in their mind, Yumiko is holding up a small ceramic vase and it's been inverted and crushed. It's very beautiful but quite upsetting to look at.

Yes, it's by a art director from Nagasaki, Nanaya Maeguma, who educates people about the impact of nuclear bombs. So this is our responsibility to do that. As somebody from Japan, I didn't get personally affected. I think of it as a personal responsibility. If you want to follow my work, my Insta, my handle is Yumiko Sakuma.

Hi, listeners. Before we finish, we just wanted to let you know about a show we love listening to. It's called Outrage and Optimism. Hosted by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Karnick, as well as sustainable economy expert Paul Dickinson, the podcast is your indispensable weekly guide when trying to make sense of the climate conversation. Outrage and Optimism are launching a special series called How to Live a Good Life in a Climate Crisis on 3rd October. Draw

Drawing on the conundrums many of us face, they explore difficult questions like, should I fly? And is it okay to eat meat? To, should I have children? And what career should I have? Spoiler alert, there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Instead, this series serves as a starting point to tackle large issues and reflect on choices without judgment. Check out Outrage and Optimism wherever you get your podcasts.

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