Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum, the refreshing, delicious treat that gives you chewing enjoyment, presents for your listening enjoyment, John Lund as... Johnny Daller. This is Maud, Mr. Daller. Mr. Brant just stepped into the office. Oh, good. I'll connect you. I'm sorry I was out when you called, Mr. Brant.  How serious is it? Okay, Mr. Brant. I'll take a run out and let you know what I find. The makers of Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum bring you John Lund and another adventure of a man with the action-pact expense account, America's Fabulous Freelance Insurance Investigator. Here's truly Johnny Daller. The makers of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum present these weekly adventures of Johnny Daller because they know that millions of you enjoy Johnny Daller. That's true of Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum, too. It's enjoyed by millions, day in and day out. People find that chewing on a smooth, delicious piece of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum somehow makes time pass more pleasantly. Whether you're working, driving, shopping, or just taking things easy, that good, tasty chewing gives you enjoyment and satisfaction. So always keep a package of Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum handy.  You'll like it. You really will. Expense account submitted by Special Investigator Johnny Daller to Corinthian All Risk Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut. The following is an accounting of expenditures during my investigation of the Monopoly matter. Expense account item one, $26.70, car rental and mileage between my Hartford apartment and what was left of the Monopoly Club in Waterbury. Just a couple of men with a high pressure hose putting the final touches to a few smoking timbers. I'll let you through the ropes. I'm from the insurance company that covers this place. You carrying credentials? Yeah. See them? Yeah. Yeah. You have to be careful. Has the fire inspector shown up yet? Yeah. That's him over there. One walking away from the two men. Captain McCready. Okay, thanks. You're welcome. Captain McCready? Yes. My name is Daller. I've been hired by the insurance company to investigate the fire. Come along. The men who answered the call first tell me it broke out inside on the ground floor. Anybody in the building? Not that we know of. No report on it, buddy. Now, let's see. The window's over there. Smoke was reported coming out of there first. Alzer! Yes, sir. Have a couple of men bring axes over here, William. Yes, sir. Timber! Do you specialize in fire cases, Mr. Daller? No, I've worked with you. Well, here we have a new building, not over five or six years old, that had passed all fire inspections and had got a license to operate as a place of public assembly. Where do you want it, Captain? Oh, you'll find some sachets over there at the base of the wall. That's where a window was. Clear the debris down to the cement in a triangle with that as the point. Spreading this way. Yes. You're looking for anything special, Captain? Point of origin. Smoke was spotted first coming out the window. Was it open? And it's so quiet. Yeah, cold weather like this. Was the club operating? No. It didn't open until two in the afternoon. We got the alarm at 11 a.m. You know anything about this Gerald Hobson who owns the place? Nothing yet. He was here, but before I was, he went home. Let's go over here and see what the men find, if anything. What we found pointed without a doubt to arson. Bits of broken bottles, the remnants of unburned cloth. Charred as the evidence was, the cause of the fire was fairly obvious. We used to call them Molotov cocktails. Bottles filled with gasoline or oil with a piece of cloth for a wick. One or more evidently had been thrown in through the window. And the damage to the frame building was over 90%. The closest neighboring building was a garage almost a hundred yards away. We questioned the people there and then Captain McReady went back to his office. I looked up the owner of the Monopoly Club, Mr. Gerald Hobson. From the insurance company? Yes, looking into the cause of the fire. Oh, of course. Well, come in. Thanks. May I take your code? I won't be here long. I'll keep it up. Just come into the other room and sit down. I looked for you out at your building, but I guess you'd left before I got there. Yes, I was there, of course. Bob at the garage, he called me about the fire. He's the one that reports it. Yes, I talked with him. And I went right out with my nerves, aren't what they were once. Fire is such a terrible thing. I didn't know what to do when I asked one of the firemen off. And he told me to go home. That people wanted nowhere to find me. Did they save anything? Nothing but the foundations and some plumbing. Oh, well, then thank heaven for the insurance. I don't suppose you share my feeling about that. You've paid the premiums, Mr. Hobson. Now, I'd like you to answer some questions about your club. Yes, of course. I understand it was a licensed place of public amusement. What kind of amusement? Well, we specialized in monopoly. In what? The game, you know. Oh, sure. Well, we have a great many factory workers in Waterbury. Well, I started the monopoly club almost, oh, it must have been three years ago, to offer them harmless entertainment and relaxation. The game was quite popular. And they were able to play in financier, you know. Oh, yeah, I remember the game. You should buy and sell and try to amass a fortune. We ran month-long tournaments and... Oh, I tell you, some of the fortunes were astronomical. Well, just billions. Was there any other amusement offered? Well, I had a few tables for the card players. There was soft drinks and candies and...  Anything you tell me will be kept in confidence. Oh, yes, of course. Did you run any gambling games? Well, of course not. My club was a decent legal establishment. The members were good everyday working people. And your income came solely from memberships? From memberships and retail sales. I don't like your information. Not one bit. I'm looking for a reason why somebody should have set fire to your building. That's why the gambling possibility crossed my mind. Heavy losses could drive somebody to it. Yes. You were absolutely sure that the fire was not accidental? The fire inspector, Captain McReady, seemed entirely satisfied. I saw the evidence too. Have you spoken to the police about this, Mr. Dyer? I know, I haven't. Why do you ask? Well, a man came to see me a week before I asked. On Monday it wasn't. I was just opening up the club and so I was the only one there. It was one of those protection rackets. And he demanded money and made threats. You told the police about it? Of course, immediately. What did you say to this man? Well, I gave him a hundred dollars to give rid of him. That was to be the fee per month. As he put it, I'd better cooperate and keep my mouth shut or he'd put me out of business for good. Well, did the police come to see you? Yes, two officers came right out to the club. I told them I'd rather meet them someplace else but they said the faster they got on his trail, the quicker they'd find him. Well, they didn't find him at all. And if somebody threw gasoline into my place, it stands to reason that that man must be the black man. Well, if you let me use your phone, Mr. Hobson, I'll call Captain McReady. We'll see what we can make out of this. Yes, of course. It's right out here, in the hall. I had a meeting with Chief Blair. Oh, it worked out fine, Captain. Gave me time for a sandwich. Good. Sergeant Winnick of the Police Bunko Squad came over. He just stepped out of the room for a moment. I'm naturally requesting an investigation from the city fire attorney, but now with the possibility of extortion, the police can start their own right away. That'll speed things up. Do you have anything else? Well, the live isn't finished with the evidence yet, but so far there are traces of three bottles. Sergeant Winnick, this is Mr. Dollar. How are you, Sergeant? Nice to know you, Mr. Dollar. Have a sit down.  Yeah. How did the subject of this man and his threat come up? Well, I told him how the fire started. I don't know what to make of it. I got out the report on that call we made at his club. Two of our men were there 15 minutes after he phoned, and Hobson's description of the man had been radioed to every squad car on the streets. You didn't get any place on it? No. We haven't had a complaint from anybody else in town on anything like it. If a protection racket was building, you'd think we'd get more than one call, wouldn't you? You think Hobson's report was untrue then, huh? We closed the investigation on the theory that a trench and had taken him for 100 bucks on a protection scare. Now I'm... I'm not so sure. You haven't checked on Hobson? Not yet, but I think we should. I'd be glad to have you along. Oh, thanks. And I guess we don't have to take up any more of the captain's time. Arson cases are among the toughest to crack.  But there was some evidence that the fire could not destroy. I faced Gerald Hobson with it that night. It was nice of you to come back, Mr. Dollar, to trouble yourself like this. You probably won't appreciate it when you've heard me out. Was that so? Why not? Well, to put it bluntly, it was a suspicion of setting the torch to your club. I must...are you out of your mind? What's the meaning of this? I spent most of the afternoon with the police. A sergeant Winick investigated your complaint a couple of weeks back. Your story of the protection threat didn't seem to hold up. Now, let me understand this. They think I was lying about that man? Oh, I don't think they'd say so in so many words. But they do, huh? Then why aren't they here? Because they're a lot more cautious than I am. I'm not stepping my bounds by coming, but I'd like to have things out in the open. I want to show you what's stacked up against you if you try to press a claim against the insurance company. Oh, yes, of course. I'd forgotten your sole interest is in saving your company's money. Oh, yes, by hook or crook. I'll be your best witness if the situation clears up in your favor. But, uh, I did some snooping. I looked into some of your financial affairs. Get out of here, you... Sure, sure. This is your castle, Mr. Hobson. This kind of privacy I have no right to invade. But the fact that $18,000 would save your financial neck is not private information anymore. Well, that's where I left it and drove the 25 miles back to Hartford in my apartment. And that's where it stayed until the phone interrupted my first cup of coffee the next morning at 10.30. Johnny Dollar. Sergeant Winington, Waterbury. Oh, yes, Sergeant. What's new? Did you jump on Hobson last night like you said you were going to? Yeah, I needed him a little. Well, I've been wrong before. Thanks for the call, Sergeant. I'll get started right away. Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum is a refreshing, delicious treat you can enjoy just about any time.   The good, smooth chewing helps relieve pent-up tension, gives you satisfaction. As a result, you seem to feel more relaxed and get more enjoyment out of what you're doing. So enjoy chewing Wrigley's spearmint gum while you work and at other times, too. Get a few packages next time you're at the store. That's Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum. Healthful, refreshing, delicious.  Well, let's come on inside. The dead man was a bystander. He just took his body down. The old timer over there has come, Roblesky. He owns the place. I shot one of the tubs. He's pretty upset. There were two of them? Yeah. The other one made a run. He's known me for a long time. No, no. He's known me for a long time. You don't have anything to worry about, Mr. Roblesky. Who? Who is this? He's not a policeman. He's Mr. Dollar, a friend of mine. I'm sorry to hear about your trouble, Mr. Roblesky. There's so much trouble in the world. Why there be this in my city? But I have right. I shoot this man, but I don't do wrong. Yeah, that's what I understand. They were threatening you, weren't they? They say I am foreigner. They say I pay them to work in my city. I say no. They say he fix my place like he fix some other. The monopoly club? Was that the name? Yes, I do not know this place. I tell him.  Then my friend Carl come in. He say, Lord, what is... He knew something was wrong. He see me mad. They turn to him. I open drawer for gun. Carl come close to fight. Then this other, he has gun. And he shoot Carl. Then this other, he turn to me and I shoot. But the one that shot Carl got away. He run. Now they say Carl is dead for trying to help me. He is wrong, my friend, to be dead. Why this be, this be good word? Why so much trouble for people? Oh, why? That's about it. Too much trouble for good people. I take it they came in while he was opening up. Yeah, that's right. He was alone. Just about like Hobson's club. The wounded man, was he conscious? Yeah, suffering from shock. So he wasn't worth anything. According to his one of these, Paul Loner. With an address in Chicago. 21 years old. Anybody spot the other one?  Not much of a description, but it fit what Roblesky gave us. Roads and railways ought to be covered by now. Yeah, they were stopping cars when I came in. Yeah, they turned the glasses in charge. The old war horse can get things done in a hurry if he feels like it. I better get that car out of the middle of the street. Yeah. Loner's over at Central Emergency Hospital. We might as well go over there and wait till he can make a statement. Tell us you're strong enough to talk, Loner. They told me too, but I don't see no reason to. You're doing plenty of talking in the bowling alley from what we hear. I don't remember. I don't blame you. Pushing an old man around like that must be something you'd really want to forget. Go start up a parish someplace, will you? How many times have you been arrested, Loner? Difference is at me. After hearing you blab while you were passed out, they want to see how many lies you'll tell now. I didn't pass. You just don't remember. You know what time it is now? I don't care what time it is. It's after four. You were out for over an hour. You don't bluff very good. Your wife's name is Edith. How's that for bluffing? Where is your wife? Ah, leave me alone. I hurt. The doctor said you were in good shape. That's a laugh. If you weren't, he wouldn't have let us in here. Where's your wife? I don't know. Look, you're wasting your time. I don't want to talk and I won't.  Did you know that? Shoot nobody. All right. I didn't have a gun. It was right there on the floor beside you.  I didn't have a gun. The guy that was with me, that was his gun. He shot the old man and you know. The report says you were there alone. That's a lie. Who was with you? The guy I teamed up with. I don't know his name. If you can prove that, it might make a difference. Can you prove it? It's true that that old guy, that Robleski, he knows it. He said you were alone. It's a lie. You're lying. He said it, he's lying. Why should we lie? To frame me. I didn't kill him. Why should Robleski lie? I don't know, but he is. And if you guys want it, you can make him say he's lying. Maybe he wants to be sure somebody gets the electric chair for killing his friend. As long as we've got you. You all right? He knows I had a partner. My partner did most of the talking. Who was your partner? I don't know. Robleski says you talked to him. I didn't. I tell you, I didn't. Bert Lucas did the talking? Yes, Bert. Take it easy, Lona. You knew Lucas was with me. Now we know. Oh, Sergeant. That's a little more. Yeah? I'll get verification of Lucas' name and description over to the radio office if you hang on here. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, that's all right. Come on in. You remember Mr. Dollar? Oh, yeah. I'll meet you in my office, Dollar. Yeah, I'll get there as fast as I can. Well, I owe you an apology, Mr. Hobson. Oh, no. Please, no. It's your job to look into things. I shouldn't have lost my temper. Thanks. Now, would you take a look at this man? Well, yes. That's because... Is he the one you gave the $100 to? No. No, I've never seen this man. You're sure? Yes, I'm positive. Did Lucas do the talking at the Monopoly Club too, Lona? He didn't have to talk much with this jerk. Oh, no. Never mind, Mr. Hobson. Who touched off the building? You or Lucas or both of you? What's the difference? I want to know. I don't see what difference it makes now, but we both did.  Bert should have squeezed $500 out of you. Then we'd been out of this town. That's all for now, Mr. Hobson. We'll call you down again when we pick up his partner. Well, that'll take some doing. Mr. Steele, I put him way out of your client. He's a vicious type of person. Yes, here, this way. Oh, oh. Oh, Mr. Dollar. Yes? I will contact you later, Mr. Hobson. Yes, thank you. Yes, nurse. Thank you. Maybe you better take this call. I've been trying to reach Sergeant Winnick, but he's not in his office yet. Well, sure, what is it? It's Lona's wife. She wants to talk to somebody who's seen her husband. Oh, where can I take it? Right over here. Okay. Hello? Hello. This is Johnny Dollar, Mrs. Lona. How, how is he? Oh, he's all right. He's going to make it fine. I just left him. We, uh, we talked about you. Where are you now, Mrs. Lona? I'm just down the street. I started out to come right down the seam when I read it, but when I got close, I, I got scared. Well, you have nothing to be afraid of, have you? People will ask me questions, and I'm not going to lie no more. You think it's wrong, but I know it's right. Of course it is. Could I meet you someplace? Oh, no. I'll be there. I'm thinking. But I always knew that something as bad as this was going to happen. I always knew when it happened I'd have to do something. The fellow who was with him is named Bert Lucas. Yeah, we learned that. The police here phoned the police in Chicago and learned about him and about you and about how you and your husband left. They weren't sure Bert Lucas was here, but we found out from your husband. I know where Bert Lucas is hiding. Where? I can't tell you by streets and roads, but in a car I could tell you how to drive there. How can you be sure he's there? He came by where we live after he got away from that trouble this morning. He didn't know Paul was hit. He said him and Paul got separated, and he was going out to that place that got burned down. The monopoly club?  Not necessarily, Mrs. Loner. Yes, I am. He knows he killed that man. He told me so. He said he'd never give himself up, but I don't care. He's in a cellar out there. That's where he is. He was going to wait till dark, but he's in a cellar out there. Yes, we met with him. Lucas may be hearing these cars. Any more might scare him out. Yeah. I think we better move in. I'll leave one man here with a search license in case we need him. Hi, Bernadette. Do you have a Thompson? Two of them, Sergeant. Good. It's dark. You may try to run for it. Leave one of your men here in case we need some light. Right. Hillary, get the search trained on the wreckage and be ready if we need it. You've been here before, darling. I haven't. I didn't spot any cellar. All right. Two Thompson's on each end. And we'll move straight in quickly until we get to the wreckage. He's armed. Any stairway to the cellar must be in one of those two corners at the back wall there. They must hear us for now. I'm going to give him a call. Lucas. Come on out, Lucas. Let's move forward. He hit one of your men. Get down. Get down, Bernadette. Really, he's hit, Sergeant. How bad? I saw the muzzle flashes, Sergeant. Back there. Or you can see that timber at an angle. I thought it was farther than I left. Hillary. White. He won't come out, Sergeant. He's in too deep to... There he goes. Lucas, stop! You'll lose him! Bernadette, stop it! Item two. $35.50. Miscellaneous. Food. Extra mileage. Et cetera, et cetera. Expense account total. $62.20. Yours, Trudy. Johnny Dodd. Remember, friends, Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum is a refreshing, delicious treat you can enjoy just about any time. Chew a few sticks of Wrigley's Spearmint during the day and see how the good chewing helps keep you feeling fresh and alert. The lively, full-bodied flavor of Wrigley's Spearmint gum cools your mouth, freshens your taste, and sweetens your breath.   And we know that you'll enjoy it too. Get a few packages and always keep some handy. That's Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum. Healthful, refreshing, delicious. Yours, Trudy. Johnny Dollar. Brought to you by Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum. Stars John Lund in the title role and was written by Gil Dowd with music by Eddie Dunsteader. Featured in tonight's cast were Sammy Hill, Bill Johnstone, Stacey Harris, Parley Bear, Herb Butterfield, Howard McNeer, Joe Duvall, and Jeanette Nolan. Yours truly, Johnny Dollar, is produced and directed by Jaime Del Valle.  This is Charles Lyon, inviting you to join us again next week at this same time, when from Hollywood, John Lund returns as... Here's Trudy, Johnny Dollar. Is the CBS Radio Network.


I can't imagine anybody doing anything more than that, it does, and what he gives to the school of these pupils. He's here late every night, he's here early in the morning, he comes in his holidays, he gives up his time constantly, and he's just inspirational. I think what sets Adam apart from perhaps other colleagues would be his sense of determination to maximise the potential of every student in every context. I think he's a support assistant for the school, but he's so much more than that. He's a colleague, friend, confident. Yeah, he fulfills many roles and he performs them all to such a high level. It's a privilege to work with him, it's a real thrill to see pupils make so much progress and such an improvement in their self-esteem and their sense of self through working with Adam. He never gives us with that we don't want to do. He always takes our ideas into consideration and puts them into his work and then gives us the work. If we have a problem and go to him, he supports us 100%.  He's one of the best teachers, I reckon he should do it.


Chain conditionals. This is a more challenging version of pass the pig, and is sometimes referred to as a conditional train. The extra challenge is to create a new sentence using the end of the previous one. As with pass the pig, the teacher begins with a sentence, for example with a first conditional, if I go out tomorrow, I'll go to a beach. The next person in the team relay must then use the end of the previous sentence, if I go to the beach, I'll sunbathe. If I sunbathe, I'll get burnt. If I get burnt, I'll go to a pharmacy. Bear in mind you can include modals such as Miton could in this pattern too. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT, the leading provider for Teflon TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking the button down here, and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


What's going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here So we're we talking about Jeepers Creepers in this video here today Just reflecting on Jeepers Creepers 4 and kind of thinking about what could have been Going off of some new fun comments that Shawn Michael Argo disclosed with me directly and Gave me permission to actually talk about them here on my channel here. So Regarding Jeepers Creepers 4 we know that it revolved around the characters of chasing Lane going to the horror hound event in Louisiana the Creepers there Lane is pregnant as we find out there in the movie and the Creeper and its cults have something in mind related to Whatever they want from Lane's baby And of course they're all tricked into getting to this house There's a few other characters that are really irrelevant as far as the overall grand scheme of things And the movie was pretty bad for the most part and that's how it's perceived by many people myself included They're longtime fans of the franchise But Shawn Michael Argo actually shared again some very interesting comments regarding what he actually would have done if it were entirely up to Him regarding Jeepers Creepers 4 and I guess you could apply this to a Jeepers Creepers 5 if he's actually brought back on to do Jeepers Creepers 5 so Here's the thing He stated to me that there was already a plan for Jeepers Creepers 4 when he was brought on So he took their core idea and I guess those the there's Those people would have to be the higher-ups to producers like your Jake seals Michael O Hovins and you know the people funding the project So when he was brought in to write it There was already a core idea and he just crafted it into the final script that he turned in and then from there Timo took his past to create the shooting draft and then here's what he had to say about what he would have done He said if it was me and I didn't have any strict orders from producers or distribution companies I would write a film that is the final showdown between Trish and the Creeper And I would present it as her being this sort of anointed Avenger that finally puts an end to the Creeper and its life Cycle but that's just me as an artist because I would absolutely make that film and it would be the last Creeper film to ever get made now You can keep on reading that if you want to my thoughts on this are that's very nice to know and what I mean is Having context as to how we actually ended up getting the script that we got and knowing that this isn't really Truthfully according to him Sean Michael Argel isn't really this isn't really what he wanted to do for a fourth Hebrew Creepers movie This was the idea presented to him and he was contracted to flesh out the idea that they already had in mind So here's what I understand or what I would now need to assume Going into Jebus Creepers Ford There was a clear agenda to continue to profit off an IP that was started by Victor salva But pivot away from any and all resemblances of his past movies that included the Creeper makeup that included past characters But the detriment there is you've made something far inferior Yes We can continue to acknowledge that what he did is terrible that was very terrible By the end of the day from a creative standpoint Creatively you guys are far worse. You're far worse And if Sean Michael Argel genuinely wanted to do a story that is kind of in line with the cathedral story I would have loved to see how that would have played out But it all came down to the higher-ups They were the ones who had an idea in mind and he just fleshed it out according to him he didn't actually want to tell this story regarding I guess the horror hound event and You know separating it from Victor's movies all together This was more so something that seems to have been a higher-up decision which I get you wanted to shun Victor salva But you did it in such a way that may have gone a bit too far You aren't even retaining the the original preferred look of the character your story as a result of what? Sean was contracted to do is far inferior and And there really just was no overall care in terms of quality I would say it seems as though the biggest thing here was to shun Victor salva and profit off an IP he He is up the creator of but don't even bother to make anything quality wise that even lives up to what he has done You just wanted to shun him profit off of it Quality be damned because these new bits of info regarding how he would prefer to do a story with Trish That just brought a smile to my face because you easily could have done a story with Trisha Get Gina Phyllis back get Jonathan Breck back get the people who actually owned the real trucks back involved and not build your own Truck shoot on real locations. Don't use a bunch of green screen Shoot a decent movie for maybe five six million dollars and that'll be the end of it And I like how his intent if he were to do it if we're all up to him would have been to end the franchise With Trish as this anointed Avenger I think that would be a cool thing very much in line with the cathedral script And it's unfortunate that he didn't get to do that because that's just not sent that simply just not what the higher-ups had in mind They had no interest in continuing the story is what I understand from that But Shawn Michael Argo if it were entirely up to him He is claiming he would have finished Trisha's story This probably would have been the final Jeepers Creepers movie ever made if it were all up to him You can still do this in Jeepers Creepers 5 you can completely disregard Jeepers Creepers 4 But the thing about it is the higher-ups that are responsible for the creative decisions that had to be made do the contracts They need to be gone. They are a problem. You again, you have the Michael O Hovins situation I believe from what I've been told and from other trusted people He's the one who has the rights to produce these movies But Jake seal is someone who I think he really needs to be completely removed this lawsuit myriad pictures is still ongoing So we have to see how that plays out But there's some things that need to get in place before you can actually decide to go out and make another Jeepers Creepers movie Because under this current regime, I think we're gonna just get trash after trash after trash But I would love to see what Shawn can actually do with a story He actually wants to tell because it sounds like again from him His preferred story to tell would be concluding what fans have been wanting a story regarding the character of Trisha Jenner And it would just be nice to see Gina Phillips back in that role I mean it really would but that information knowing that there was a concept already in mind from the higher ups And he was just contracted to flesh it out. That's very eye-opening. It makes me a little bit more reluctant to say Okay, maybe Shawn shouldn't come back Shawn can come back. I would say under the right Circumstances and if he's able to do the story that he wants to tell and if it's something that of course the producers They're on on board with the project agree with then so be it But this concept here that he had to write because they wanted it to be completely this Disconnected from Sal was films. That was terrible. This film was terrible. It ended up being terrible. The quality overall was terrible Luke warmed to sub par terrible abysmal performances terrible CGI effects Just no real atmosphere team over in solar as a director I think he's terrible Everything about the project just ended up being a complete bust But you guys let me know what you think about this new revelation from Shawn Michael Argo down in the comment section below if you haven't already course Make sure you subscribe turn on post notification numbers of video in the description. I will have links to all my social media accounts I'm on Facebook Twitter and Instagram you can message me there Of course limiters any movies news or reviews let me to cover in the future and with all that in mind guys I will see you in the next video


Very exciting to be here. DevCon is just such an amazing event and you know the energy here It's incredible and just excited to be able to talk to you guys today So yeah, I'm Harry. I am the CTO and one of the co-founders of Off-Chain Labs the company that built Arbitrum and I'm here today I'm going to kind of walk you through a bit of the history of Arbitrum and how we got here Where we are today and then talk some about sort of where we're heading and what the future looks like So Arbitrum is actually originally came up with really cool history in 2014 Actually before Ethereum had even launched one of our co-founders Ed had the idea of hey This thing is really cool, but it doesn't seem like it's going to scale Now at the time it was very early and the idea ended up sort of forgotten the history for a little while In 2017 we started working on it at the time we're at Princeton University Academics thought hey, this is really cool and interesting and it seems like there might be something that'll that'll really grow here And we started out. We wrote a research paper back in 2018 It's crazy because it feels like yesterday to me, but it's almost ancient history in in crypto time And then managed to somehow and I still not completely sure how To found a company around it And share it with the community So at that point we had this idea we were building Back in February 2020 just around East Denver. We actually had the first Arbitrum test net It was a lot different than it is now Actually, we started with Technology that looks a lot like it looks more like an included features Like our Nova chain has today, which I'll mention a little bit, but it was not a roll-up. It had a committee It had sort of off-chain agreement But it had a lot of features like it has now and doing application specific chains So interestingly sort of a lot of where we are now it was too early then but There was sort of a lot of ideas that have been bouncing around that I think are now sort of coming out as really popular And then we went from there. We launched test nets. We figured out to arbitrary contract deployment We figured out arbitrary messaging We actually got our main net out and this was back in May of last year We launched our main net to developers only we had a great few months there and then in August So over a year ago now we launched on main net And that is how we we ended up, you know building Arbitrum one getting it out there It's been an incredible time since then but the building ever stops You know if you stop in crypto you might as well, you know, you're done Nothing is ever sort of, you know, research always continues. No technology today will be sort of It'll all look ancient in five years And kind of Arbitrum when we launched already looks ancient compared to Arbitrum where it is today Because this last year we worked on our nitro upgrade, which I'm going to be talking about some today We launched our Nova chain, which as I said sort of actually takes a lot of ideas from our original paper And sort of the world is now I think in a position where they make a lot more sense than they did then We went through a really sort of Challenging and interesting thing, which was the live upgrade of our Arbitrum chain to an entirely new technology stack And it was really interesting to us. We did it kind of a couple weeks before the merge and it was essentially our merge In that certainly not not, you know, the same amount of coordination necessary but the idea of kind of taking a technology stack and Somehow well with a running system actually kind of replaced the technology underneath it with a newer version With a more powerful version that allowed it to be cheaper faster all sorts of good stuff Which has made it for a really exciting year for us So Arbitrum one just to kind of jump into like well, what is this thing? I've been talking about I walked you through the history, but you know, it's nice to sort of dig in a bit more talk high level What does Arbitrum provide? Why should you care? Hopefully most people here already know, but it's certainly nice to say low-cost transactions Security rooted in Ethereum so inheriting security rather than trying to have independent security Which is really powerful, which is what roll-ups give us and really really really full compatibility with Ethereum Which is the thing that only optimistic roll-ups at least today can provide And means that sort of tooling languages everything just works and it's been really huge for developer adoption It's meant that the learning curve and the difficulty of applying on Arbitrum is been incredibly low And it's how we've been able to get so many people involved and have so many people benefit from the technology that we're building So just a couple stats and this is actually slightly out of date because the market is down and this slide was made Before the so I think it's more two billion plus now Although the amount of value in East I think has increased So you know from depends how you look at it But Arbitrum is going strong We have a huge amount of adoption huge amount of projects huge amount of users And it's just been sort of incredibly thrilling to watch it feels as though it's been like forever now But it was only a little over a year ago that that this all became possible We have a huge ecosystem. We have kind of native apps We have Ethereum dApps that are kind of have been on L1 and started out there, but then have migrated We have tons of infrastructure support from all sorts of different companies Shout out to to tenderly that just launched artful Arbitrum support recently, which was very exciting and Arbitrum is becoming a major part of Ethereum Two kind of interesting charts here one being oh, and it's not rendering very well, but you can look on ether scan yourself One being that Arbitrum the Arbitrum sequencer is one of the biggest gas vendors on Ethereum That we are now sort of using a significant amount of L1 resources in order to power the roll-up Which is really exciting and also very exciting that that will hopefully go way down with 4844 which I won't get to talk about too much in this talk, but Is extremely exciting that and the other thing being the amount of ETH is just in Arbitrum That our bridge escrow funds that are deposited in the system And the amount of funds in that bridge is a very kind of very significant chunk of of ETH, which is crazy exciting And then the other thing to look at and this is sort of just you know very exciting And also has been kind of vastly improved with Nitro is how cheap it is to use I think we're on average coming in at somewhere between kind of 10x and 50x price reduction compared to Ethereum This has gotten better with Nitro as we added compression L2 costs are quite low because of all the efficiencies of the system and the fact that kind of the gas limits can be quite high And so you can see we have we have appeared just L2 fees Which is a very nice thing to look at You can see that we are coming in sort of just a couple cents to to transact in the simplest case We're doing ETH transfer and even smart contract execution is very cheap and easy So I mean that's one thing always to look at is essentially ETH transfer It's easy to be cheap but also to be cheap with with contract execution where users can use a lot of gas and it still comes in cheap is really Really important and I think one of the areas that I'd say is sort of especially of course this presentation in the last one Obviously for people who saw both are covering kind of you know similar ideas And I think this is one place to distinguish optimistic roll-ups is that we can do a lot of execute a lot of computation a lot of execution at very low cost And just sort of for roll-ups in general and this is sort of general across Across ZK roll-ups across optimistic roll-ups, but I think it's really important to talk about Is just looking at sort of what sort of what roll-ups can give you versus side chains So with roll-ups for daily we are using Ethereum or we're depending on Ethereum for data availability all transactions get posted Unlike side chains where kind of it's the data is separate maybe they're posting headers back But it's an independent system. We have a bite cut for a second, but I'm back We have L1 to L2 bridging that's enforced through the security of the roll-up and that's sort of one of the most important features of roll-ups to me Is the fact that the bridge is part of the system. There's no sort of independent Multisig no independent bridge mechanism The bridge is the roll-up which is really fundamental as opposed to sort of needing some sort of messaging layer That's independent from the security system Roll-ups use fraud proofs Or fraud proofs for optimistic roll-ups fraud proofs, of course Which means that anybody can prove the correctness of the chain And it means that basically you don't need two-thirds honest. You don't even need half honest You would only need one honest validator in order to secure the system Which is an incredibly powerful property as opposed to needing kind of a And then just to mention a little bit. I'm mostly talking about the roll-up today, but I want to also mention Nova Which is sort of our our kind of version of Arbitrum but with the data availability committee. There's some really interesting trade-offs here And it's a kind of a very active design space that I think the whole roll-up community is exploring Which is ways to make data cheaper posting to Ethereum is the expensive part And so being able to move that off-chain by having a committee where you're not worried about a majority You're only worried about a couple on that committee being honest is a really powerful thing And it's what allowed us to be able to offer a platform that can really be competitive With sort of other non-roll-up systems, which don't have the cost of posting to Ethereum and fun It's an interesting trade-off. It does make some sacrifices in security If we think about it is that we're not competing with roll-ups We think if you can afford a roll-up you should use it What we're competing with is other solutions that don't have that level of security and trying to provide something more secure than they are Now just a little bit about sort of how nitro works and sort of how to imagine the system a lot of times with roll-ups Because it's so compatible. It's kind of a black box You have the RBC you point at the PC you use it just like Ethereum and that's it But it's really I think you know valuable to really understand what's going on And really important so we put it up into a number of steps and this is we've it on this a lot How do you explain this thing? It's complicated. There are a lot of different pieces I think the latest iteration is one that we're pretty happy with So we start off by talking about sequencing and this is probably a you know The role of the sequencer is one that's sort of most well known in how roll-ups work sequencer is a is a is a Know that orders transactions it receives transactions in it puts them in an order And then it runs them It evaluates state transition function and it produces blocks Well that basically sounds like how Ethereum works if you replace sequencer with miners Although for the sequencer, there's one entity rather than a lot of them The interesting part is in parallel or slightly trailing the ordering of transactions The sequencer is also batching and compressing those transactions and posting it to the L1 chain Now one key thing to understand here is that the sequencer is not a testing to state roots The sequencer is not making claims about what the result of executing those transactions are Like what the result is all it's doing is saying this is this are these are the transactions So there's no such thing as sort of claiming something valid you in that sorry claiming something invalid You could post an invalid transaction Certainly, but it would just be ignored by the state transition function and rejected and the sequencer would be out some money But it wouldn't have any other consequence and so that gets posted to the L1 chain and then picked up by The actual roll-up security mechanism, which I'm not going to be able to get too much into in this talk But there's some great material about online So what does this mean in terms of finality, which is one of those important questions? Because you have these systems and you have like you have when MetaMask says okay the transactions in a block But that's not enough finality is this really important question, which is when can your transaction be reversed? it's one of the things that with with the With the merge has changed a lot for Ethereum in very interesting ways And sort of arbitra has its own notion of basically how you can tell when a transaction is final And so we split it up into three phases We have soft finality where the sequencer said it's the order if the sequencer is honest. That's what the order is But you're trusting the sequencer and so for many applications. This is this is actually pretty good Currently the sequencer is being run by us long term the sequencer will be decentralized over a number of parties No need to trust it, but you can and a lot of people do After that is kind of the really important mark though Which is when can you actually not trust the sequencer because trust it if you just trust it the whole time It's a centralized system and for particularly for kind of exchanges for anybody doing cross-chain stuff You really don't want to introduce any trust assumptions And so for that basically the idea is that after the sequencer is posted a batch on chain The order is set once the transaction posting that batch itself has L1 finality The system is completely deterministic So any node off-chain can get a guarantee of what the current state of the chain is based on batches posted And so if you're familiar with optimistic roll-ups, we have and this is the last phase this certification process Which takes seven days the only thing that's for is to prove back to Ethereum what the result is Because after ten minutes after a batch is posted and finalized on L1 Anybody in the world looking at the chain other than Ethereum can know and the reason for this is really simple Ethereum can't actually run all the transactions because then it wouldn't be a roll-up and then it would be expensive Ethereum's not running them. We're using fraud proofs But off-chain anybody could just run the transactions themselves and calculate the result. So now that we have that down What is the state transition function? I mentioned it quickly But it's sort of a very core part and that is basically with Nitro We now have essentially a wrapper around the kind of core geth implementation of a theorem state transition function Which means our functionality can be essentially identical with geth. We don't need to worry about corner cases We don't need to worry about weirdness and about matching Matching implementation specs because the geth team doesn't imagine it does an amazing job of that And we can just lean on their work and on geth's correctness for our correctness Which is really valuable because it's incredibly hard to get all of those corner cases Correct, and we don't need to and then I think the last part that I'm going to talk about today is how execution and proving are different Which is really interesting and really where where we get all of our where we can get most of our performance from and this is something Actually that changed with Nitro before Nitro. There was a VM it ran transactions A result was produced and that also contained and that was also a proof That's very inefficient because proving tends to be something that's very slow With Nitro instead we split up these processes and so we have basically one core code base compiled in two different ways One to run at native speed on your computer at exactly the same speed any any EVM chain can and one Compiled to wasm and used for proving both from the exact same code So there's not there's no need for kind of multiple implementations There's no need to worry about is the client in sync with the prover and all sorts of weird edge cases You can get into there. It's using the same code and this is and you know I like to show this slide just because and it's it's when we first started showing it I think it was sort of very recent now. It's it's Two years later, which is kind of insane Which is really kind of how we ended up here and how I think the ethereum community came to this path Which is the idea that roll-ups are the way that ethereum is going to scale And I think that's sort of really important to us and really we the way we think about it is that Kind of yes, there are multiple different technologies. Yes, we're all building but kind of really what we're doing is We're empowering ethereum to actually kind of be competitive against other alternative blockchains Since those two systems in combination can do much more than other blockchains can do alone And then just at the end I wanted to mention so what is Nova? I mentioned it once it's got this other system all Nova is and this is really cool is adding this data availability committee So otherwise the diagram is exactly the same It's just what I explained but rather than batching and compressing and posting to L1 We instead batch and compress hand it to a committee have them generate signatures and post those signatures to ethereum Which is how you get so much cost savings When using when using the Nova chain, but why it has an additional security assumption compared to ethereum? And then I just wanted to wrap up a little bit by talking about sort of I Talked a lot about where we are and sort of what's great about the technology I want to really talk about sort of where the technology is not yet and what still needs to be done And this is something that's been sort of a huge effort for us to try to figure out There's so much going on there's so much complexity that really sort of keeping people aware of kind of the status of this technology Of where we are is really important L2 beat for anybody familiar has done an amazing job with this and I would highly recommend anybody who hasn't to read through Their security analysis which they've done on all the major roll-ups But just to talk about kind of where arbitra is in this regard So arbitra is I think right now fair to say the only optimistic roll-up in production with fraud proofs Which is incredibly exciting and which was we have been since launch and is really core to us to actually lead tech first We come from an academic background. The tech is important But it's not a full roll-up yet And I wouldn't want to consider it that because for arbitra and validation is currently permissioned Which is one of our big priorities for this coming year is to drop permissioning now. It's not just us There's a great set of validators I think actually in the coming weeks we're going to do an announcement where we list all the different entities that are currently Validating the arbitra chain But having it be fully permissionless so you can truly make good on the promise of anybody can force it to be correct Ness is critically important Next is the sequencer fast finality guarantees They're very useful and in practice we are running the sequence now, which is fine as a short-term solution But these guarantees only hold if you trust that sequencer and so getting a more distributed system Where you can kind of have a much stronger guarantee that the ordering you get quickly will definitely be the ordering You get when those batches are posted on chain is a really important step forward to again reaching sort of this This real promised future and the last one and I think this is sort of the hardest kind of comp The hardest issue and I think the biggest the biggest sort of discussion and one that's sort of really important has been having happening a lot here is How do you think about handling critical bugs in these systems that fundamentally? This is sort of a really scary process if a theory and hits a bug or a bitcoin hits a bug They will fork and fix that bug because it's in the core protocol and those protocols can fork but what do roll-ups do roll-ups or smart contracts and so figuring out sort of if Ethereum would fork and fix an issue in arbitra that would be amazing But I think that's a long way to come and that's sort of what you get into when you imagine in trying to roll-ups Which is a whole another conversation But how to do sort of without that In a way that maximizes decentralization while also protecting ourselves from the risk of bugs because anybody who sort of Extremely confident. They don't have bugs today. I think is is overconfident And sort of figuring out what the balance here between sort of necessary critical emergency paths and Security for users is a really important question And I know just sort of shout out to one one idea that Vitalik's been been running with a lot recently There's some really cool work being done around the ideas of having multiple provers and having a majority of those provers Need to all agree because then if one of them has a bug as long as the other one doesn't have the same bug Then they can be checks for each other and if you have multiple implement multiple independent implementations Then you get a lot of the same security benefits that client diversity has for Ethereum As for roll-up security, which would be a really big thing. So yeah, thank you all for for for bearing with me through this And I hope it was interesting Been a total blast being here and and yeah, I think we should probably have a few minutes for questions Hey, thanks. This was great. Do you see Optimism's pet chalk in our bitchums nitro converge in the specifications So there's absolutely been a lot of kind of very interesting convergence between Arbitrum and optimism over the years Both projects obviously that have been building for quite a long time I think that sort of and this is you know, I don't think this is happenstance that like we've learned from each other And kind of design models have shifted. I'd like to say and then you know take this with a grain of salt because I'm obviously biased That sort of our our initial design was much more influential Particularly interactive fraud proofs, which were a mechanism that we have been kind of arguing for for years And finally one out on versus the alternative which would sit on fraud proofs Which kind of was the original optimism design? So I think there's a lot of alignment there and a lot of coming together and I think there's a lot of room for standardization Yeah Hi, Harry. Thanks very much Just on the last topic you were talking about about critical bugs and how you could fix them and this sort of issues that raises I was thinking about what Danny was talking about in his talk in the opening day, you know minimizing governance Do you see any prospect of breaking out the Arbitrum design into multiple components where a bunch of them are immutable And you're able to restrict the governance to just a small part No, it's a really great question And I think it's it's something that sort of as we are now kind of in and I'll say kind of for context Nitro was our biggest priority for a very long time because it really kind of was solving key performance issues That users were having on the I think our next priorities are all around really deep diving on these questions of exactly How much can you minimize? Upgradability is a really tricky thing because a lot of the time if anything is upgradeable then that component could be captured And so really figuring out sort of like if there's a if there are ways to sort of Modularize your security in a way to create protection is a great is sort of a really interesting open-ended question So for instance a modular stack, which is just a set of layers on top of each other Doesn't really help there if some of them aren't upgradeable because if you control an entire layer Chances are you can do whatever you want So figuring out sort of what arrangements there are to minimize that I don't have a great answer But it's a really interesting area for work Hey, thanks for the great talk So asking kind of like a spicy question What is like the core reason why you are still maintaining a whitelist on the fraud proofs? And then you know if that's for like you know gas reasons or like DOS reasons or whatever Is there a reason you wouldn't deploy you know a version of like arbitra on something like gorely that has you know Non whitelisted, you know fraud prover so that you can increase kind of the confidence if people by able to generate Fraud proofs or at least run that mechanism themselves. No, it's a great question No, and I you know I really appreciate when people ask critical questions. I think a lot of times in this space There's a lot there's too much trust that's put into teams and it's really important to be be skeptical So there's another there's a few different reasons I think kind of both the sort of performance of the roll-up protocol as many parties come in and Sort of confidence in sort of the underlying fraud proof mechanisms, which have been growing over time Are sort of kind of core reasons I think that in this coming year and I fully expect within the six within the next six months We will have permissionless fraud proofs on main net As to why not gorelly. It's an interesting question We totally could I think the main argument against it is that Having the code on test net and the code on main net be exactly the same is the best way to sort of minimize the chances of bugs We have if you're interested Large amount of fuzzing that sort of has been done on the fraud proof mechanism itself Which is obviously sort of not very visible To to users, but there is quite a bit of it. We'd be definitely happy to point at that Thank you so much. Harry Kaliner. Please give him a big applause


I'm Sheila McNeil and Martin and I work together at Cetus so we know each other well so hopefully this will be an interesting conversation for us both but it's been good for us to have this time to catch up and have a chat because you've been really busy and I had quite a busy day yesterday as well so hopefully it'll be an interesting conversation. I think this is probably about my 7th or 8th. I try and come every year though it doesn't always work out so sometimes it's alternate years but I've definitely been for the last three in a row to a couple of other ones but I always enjoy it. Have you ever come across sight at old to see and thought that it's just marvellous, brilliant or is it more of the general experience? I think it's more of the general experience about old and I think the good thing about old I always feel it's like touching base, it's like finding out what people are doing and what they're talking about and I think there's quite a lot of reassurance at old. I've noticed that yesterday and this morning similar things are coming through and I think that's really good to have that when people come from different institutions and different sectors as well as people from colleges and universities and people from schools so I think that's good. Particularly relating to the sensible use and appropriate use of technology. What sort of things have you picked up over the last day and a half? A lot about listening and listening to learners which I think is something that is really obvious but sometimes we do forget so that was your key. I went to a really interesting presentation from Sue Bennett from Australia yesterday and she was just talking about some work she's been doing about researching how students use technology and there were just some really interesting points there about sometimes we forget that we just presume that the kids know how to use things because they've got smart phones, they've got tablets, they've got this and that and they're always connected all the time but they don't know how to contextualise a lot that communication and how to use the technology in an educational setting. We probably need to do more as educators to help our students be comfortable so that they can use it appropriately. So it's a combination of digital literacy skills and actually using the appropriate technology and thinking about that technology didn't work, sometimes it's not the technology's fault. It's because we actually haven't set up the right environment and we haven't made sure that people can contextualise themselves. So that was really interesting and yesterday was quite a busy day for me because I would kind of spot my session, my invited talk session. But I think it was really interesting, again some of the key notes from the student voice about engaging and I think kind of the wider civic responsibility of universities in particular that resonated with me. That was something that I was in one of the sessions with a couple of University of Nottingham people talking about ebooks and their nukes and things like that. But I think Nottingham in particular is quite fitting that we're here, they seem to have adopted a social position which is very open so it was quite nice to see what they were up to. Is there anything you're looking forward to over the next day and a half? A couple of the key notes, looking forward to what Stephen Dines is going to say because again we don't need controversy but I'm sure Stephen will have a really interesting take and maybe he'll see things that are happening in the UK in a different way than we do. So that'll be interesting to hear his tea and yeah there's just lots going on. I don't think I can really highlight any other one thing in particular. Obviously there's my session tomorrow so people are still undecided what to go to come and listen to me talking about MIX and my reflection on it as a student. And you should tune in to Sheila who occasionally is a mook agony ass on how she was using it, I think it's your new blog. It's quite fitting though then to thank Sheila for your time and just to say that as well as Stephen Dines' keynote being streamed tomorrow we hope to have him on the couch as well. You can maybe get a little tantalising glimpse of what he might say so thanks very much Sheila.


You know, looking back at the 90s, it really was a golden age for just really weird media that was aimed at kids. Because we had stuff like Warriors of Virtue, which was a movie about talking humanoid kangaroos that knew kung fu. Trust me, it doesn't make sense in context either. It was a very strange film. You've come uninvited into our light spring, Komodo. This is our home. We want it back. Warriors! Komodo! We had stuff like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which in the words of Donald Glover, sounds like a homeless person's fever dream.  Oh, okay, my stack of books fell over. That's fine, I was expecting that. But we had basically everything that was on Nickelodeon for that entire decade was very, very odd. Stuff like Ren and Stimpy, or Rocco's Modern Life, things. They were weird, is what I'm getting at. I already did a whole video talking about Animorphs and how weird that was, and I did another video talking about Everworld, and granted I was mostly focused on how good that series was, but it was also very strange when you get down to it. So in a way, it was kind of weirder when something came along in the 90s that was aimed at kids that wasn't all that strange, and it still did really well. Enter Goosebumps. Now, Goosebumps is an absolutely massive franchise. Like it started off as a book series, which has over 60 entries, and it has multiple spin-off series, such as Goosebumps Horrorland, or Choose Your Own Goosebumps. And some of those have dozens of entries on their own. They had several video games made of it over, like somewhere in the 90s, somewhere a bit more recent. They had a TV show in the 90s, which is kind of famous nowadays for having really terrible acting, but I will say that the theme song still sends chills down my spine. They even made a couple of movies off of it, and like these weren't a long time ago either. These were just in the past few years, like they had Jack Black in them and everything. And I saw the first one, it's actually not bad, but the point I'm getting at is that this isn't just nostalgia, you know, it wasn't like, oh hey, this was successful in the 90s, let's make some stuff to pander to millennials or whatever, like no, there is something about it that makes kids today still interested in this series. And I've mentioned playing at times before, as soon as something gets big enough, a lot of other people come in and try to copy it so that they can ape on some of that success. Like I made a video on Twilight clones and how those worked, I made a video on how the Hunger Games clones all worked, and I point out in both of those that a lot of times the clones just sort of copied the aesthetic of it without really understanding what made it work, and so they just didn't have quite the same staying power and none of them reached that same level of success. And Goosebumps was no different. There were a ton of book series aimed at kids that were like horror or horror-esque in the 90s and early 2000s, stuff like Strange Matter, Spooksville, Michigan Chillers, Dead Time Stories, Bone Chillers, Graveyard School, Shivers, The Bailey School Kids, and probably a couple of others that I have never even heard of. Now, most of these series have a very similar formula to Goosebumps.  And please note that I said situations not adventures because in most of these, like whether we're talking Goosebumps or the other ones, most of the time you don't come away envious, you know you don't come away thinking like, man, I wish I could go on adventures like that. Like, no, it's most of the time it sounds terrible. Even if the book is not one of the scarier ones, which let's be honest, a lot of Goosebumps and a lot of the other ones just weren't that scary. They were still entertaining reads, but they weren't like things that would make it hard for you to sleep at night. But the point is you still don't come away wanting to be characters in there the way you would with something like, say, Harry Potter, where a huge chunk of the series is just wish fulfillment. Now this video isn't going to be like a super deep dive into the topic because usually when I do that I prefer for it to be scripted, but this one, I just kind of want to look at Goosebumps, look at, you know, what made it work, what made it have such staying power, why do so many people have such fond memories of it, and then just look at how that worked and why other series never quite reached that same level.   This is why that worked. It's still probably not going to be your favorite thing ever. But I mean, if you're really curious, go read a couple of them and come back. So the first thing to note about Goosebumps is that it is a really long series. Like I said before, it has over 60 entries, but most of the books are self-contained. You know, you can just pick up any random one from any part of the series and then read through it and you won't be confused or anything. Like to this day, there are still a couple in the series that I never read for one reason or another, but it's not like I have holes in my knowledge or anything. Like I read all the others and they're all pretty much self-contained. Like they'll introduce new characters, introduce a new supernatural threat of some sort, introduce a new situation for them to be in, and a lot of times they have cliffhanger endings and we just never find out what happens. There are a couple of sequels where you would need to read the ones that came before, but not that many. Like Monster Blood, you know, there's Monster Blood 1, 2, 3, 4, and it's just the same kid running into situations surrounding Monster Blood. There's Say Cheese and Die, and then there's Say Cheese and Die Again, which is about a haunted camera. There's Night of the Living Dummy, 1, 2, and 3, like, you know, things like that. Every one of these entries follows a kid in a scary situation. Usually they're on their own. Not always. Sometimes they'll have one or two friends with them, but the thing is there aren't any adults around to help.  Like, your parents would be the first choice for most people, but if they're not available for whatever reason, you might go to your grandparents or a teacher or an older sibling or something like that. And the thing about Goosebumps is that that's usually not an option for them for one reason or another.  So, you know, they are both literally and metaphorically isolated.  And most of the time, they can't like just fight their way out either. You know, they don't have any sort of super special powers most of the time. There are there are one or two entries where it turns out that the kid had powers all along, but that's usually a twist right near the end. But it's not like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or something like that, where they can just figure out how to use these new powers they have and fight out of trouble. Like no, it's they have to rely on their own wits and they have to rely on luck. Plus, there were no cell phones in the 90s, or at least they weren't very common in the 90s. So calling for help when you're stuck out in the wilderness or something just wasn't an option most of the time. In fact, I believe Arl Stein has commented on how difficult it is to write stuff that takes place in the modern day, just because you have to spend a lot of time getting rid of cell phones. That's why pretty much every modern day horror movie has at least one scene where characters are holding up a phone going, Hey, there's no service out here. And they're like, Yeah, we're in the middle of nowhere. Like, they have to do that to isolate the characters. Otherwise, you're just wondering, Well, why don't they just call for help? Another thing Goosebumps did really well a lot of the time was that it played around with ideas of monsters. You know, pretty good examples of this would be werewolf skin and vampire breath. Now, we obviously know all about werewolves, like people turn, excuse me, people turn into wolves on the full moon, they run around if you bite, if you get bitten by one, you turn into a werewolf. But werewolf skin changed it around so that once the full moon goes down, the person who is a werewolf sheds their skin. And on the inside, they're a human again. And then when the moon comes back up later, they run over, put their skin back on and that they're a werewolf again. So that's, that's a unique take on it. And vampire breath is pretty similar, like vampires actually take out their fangs when they're sleeping, kind of like those, like those fake plastic vampire fangs, I'm imagining. And the two main characters actually get trapped by a vampire in his castle. And he tells them like, there's really no way you're going to get out of here. I don't have my fangs. I'm going to go search for them.  But in the meantime, just have fun wandering around. And that's most of the book. I'm really not exaggerating. That's kind of how it goes. But again, that is a different take on something that we've seen a lot of times, like, especially in the, the years since goosebumps has kind of faded away. Vampires have been done over and over and over again. And very rarely were they done differently in any way. So looking back, that's especially impressive. The stories often had constant twists, like just constant twists. Like you think you know what's going on. Oh, no, you don't. It's actually something else is going on. Like the person you thought was a bad guy actually turned out to not be that awful. And the person you thought was a good guy turned out to be really bad. And so you never know what's going on. And that works really great for horror, especially horror and thrillers. And Arlstein was not afraid to give you twist endings that left you hanging like stuff like Welcome to Camp Nightmare, where it turns out that the entire time these kids are at a summer camp and other kids are going missing and the main character is wondering what's going on. And at the end, he finds out it was all a test. His parents are actually going on a mission to another planet. And they wanted to take him along, but they had to make sure he was prepared. And he's like, Well, what's the planet? It's called Earth. The people there are called humans. And you realize, Oh, okay, he, these people have all been aliens all along. And it's just that that's the end of it. We never find out what happens next. And it works really well in a horror format. Or my best friend is invisible, where at the end, the main character finally sees the invisible guy who's been making his life hell for like a week.   And it turns out they were aliens the whole time. They actually, they used that twist a couple of times, actually, like either the main characters were aliens the whole time, or they were monsters the whole time. And we just didn't find out about it. And granted, it is, they do it at least slightly differently every time. But, you know, they, they do the same twist a lot. But there are other twist endings, like, for example, the legend of the Lost Legend. At the end of that one, they finally find the Lost Legend. And they're, you know, stranded out in the middle of the woods somewhere. And then they open it up and it says whoever owns the Lost Legend will be lost forever. And they look around and realize, like, wait, where are we? These woods look unfamiliar? And you realize, Oh, well, they're going to be lost in the woods forever.  You know, like there are, it's a simple idea. You know, like just having a cliff hanger where you're like, Oh, they're in trouble. They might not get out of this alive. Works pretty well for horror.  Like either way, it works really well for horror. And so you combine a couple of those elements together. And while it usually is pretty formulaic, it works great to get kids not only into reading but into horror stuff in general. But now that we understand the basics of what makes Goosebumps work, let's look at some of the rip offs and see like where exactly they went wrong. So the first Goosebumps rip off that I really read and was familiar with was Spooksville. And this one, this one I only read about because my older brothers used to have a really big collection of Goosebumps books. And then they just had one Spooksville book in there. It was Aliens in the Sky, if you're curious. And it was just, I don't know, I was really into aliens at the time. So I read that one. I thought, well, this is a lot like Goosebumps, but it's not quite as good. And at the time, I obviously couldn't articulate how I felt about it or why. But that was basically my thoughts. And I would show off that Goosebumps collection. But I mean, after they moved out, they gave it to me. And then years ago, I gave it to my nephew. So it's long gone now. Anyways, with that, that tangent out of the way, the Spooksville books are, you know, very similar to Goosebumps.  It's very similar to Goosebumps in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, it does work. Like I said, Aliens in the Sky is not a bad book by any means. I think it's pretty decent looking back. But it makes one major, major mistake, which kind of prevents it from ever reaching the same level as Goosebumps. And that is that it sends the kids on adventures. Like it doesn't put them in scary situations and force them to get out or die. Or in some cases, it's not die, but meet a fate that's worse than death. Because, you know, censorship boards would have been upset about it or school boards would have upset about whatever. Like the point is some bad things would happen to them. But like in Spooksville, they like go to other dimensions and overthrow an evil king with the help of some of their new friends. And that's not really scary so much. That's like an adventure. And so it just it never quite worked on the same level as Goosebumps. And it also makes the mistake of having the same characters in every book. Like it has one core cast of kids that are all in the same town and they just go on one adventure after another rather than having new characters in every book. So they can never be in real danger is the thing.  And that's the end of their story. Like they have to continue making more books. So they're never in real danger. And so even as a kid that the level of tension just wasn't quite there for me.  Like and that's just that's just kind of unfortunate because a lot of times that was a big part of the Goosebumps identity. Like another good one would be like the Beast from the East where the kids are spending the whole book playing a game with these giant animals that are going to eat them if they lose and then they finally win. And then at the very end they run into another one and he starts the game again.  And then just that's how it ends. And you you would not be able to do that with Spooksville because you'd be wondering wait what happens in the next book. And then they would either have to drop that storyline altogether and you'd feel like you are ripped off or they would have to try and continue it. And at that point it's no longer a self-contained story. And it just the whole thing falls apart. Now I'm not trying to say that Spooksville is a terrible series. Like obviously I haven't read it in a long time. But from what I remember it was fine. It's just that it never quite reached the level of what it was trying to imitate because it didn't really understand what made it work. Or possibly they did understand what made it work and they just tried to set themselves apart by doing something slightly different and having this same cast of characters the whole time. And it just didn't quite click for me. Either way it never reached the same level as Goosebumps. The next one that I really remember pretty well is called Strange Matter. This one again is very similar. Kids run into various supernatural threats like haunted houses and they go out into the woods in one and there's like these lizard men who are actually just pirates from a couple hundred years earlier who were cursed and they melt in water. It's very odd. It's an odd book. And this one is different than Spooksville in that it actually does have different characters in every book. So it fixes that problem. But it all takes place in the same town. The town of Fairfield if you're curious. And that I think actually works because it allows you to have this certain level of continuity and you can make references to past books or you can like foreshadow future ones which the series does at a couple of points and it it works out okay. And when you get rid of the same cast of characters in every book you can actually do stuff like kill them off or make it seem like they're going to be killed off. So there is actual tension there. And you know they have tons of like monsters in the woods, witches, haunted houses like there's nothing here that is phenomenally bad. And honestly thinking back on it I can't remember all that much in terms of specifics. Like I remember a couple of brief moments from the series but I don't really remember that much about the characters.  Or there was one where they were getting stalked by a Yeti in in the mountains and that one was pretty spooky just because at the time I believed in Sasquatch. But you know I just don't remember that much about them and in a way it makes me feel like maybe it's better to be bad than to be forgettable. It's like would I rather read the Twilight books or would I rather read the Halo trilogy again. Like they're both pretty bad but the Halo trilogy is bad in a boring way where I just didn't really care about anything that happened whereas Twilight is still bad but it's a lot funnier. Like I can at least laugh at parts of it. So I don't know like I just I don't have that much to say about Strange Matter. It wasn't it didn't stick with me. And now we go to the stack of books that I had sitting with me here the Michigan Chillers series. Like this is half of it the other half still just sitting there. And this is basically the same you know it's kids run into a bunch of various threats but they all take place in Michigan and it's more similar to Goose Bumps in that it changes characters every time. And so we have stuff like dinosaurs destroy Detroit creepy clowns of Kalamazoo which if you are unaware yes Kalamazoo is a real city in Michigan or the first one mayhem on Mackinac Island. Like you know it's just things that take place in the author's home state. Like he wanted to write stuff that happened in his area and you know what good on him for that that that's fine. Like it's not something I'm particularly into like the reason I have all of these is just because my sister used to live in Michigan and she would send me these as gifts. But you know to me Michigan's just yeah this place over there it's not my home but I mean I think the books were fine. You know they uh they were just kind of more Goose Bumps stuff. Now it kind of has the same problem as Spooksville in that there is a continuous storyline even if they don't have uh the same characters in every book I suppose. Like for example at the end of the first book uh the main character like gets out of all the trouble she was in and she was like whoa that was crazy and then she runs into one of her friends and she's like hey man I gotta tell you about what just went down with me and he's like oh well before that happens let me tell you about what happened down at Christmas time back in my home and then Terror Stalks Traverse City is book two and it follows that guy uh in during his own adventure and then at the end of that one he runs into some other people and he tells them about that and they're like oh well that sounds an awful lot like what happened to us last summer and it just every book ends that way so it's going backwards in chronological order it's like memento it's kind kind of interesting but it does have the same problem in that you know oh nothing really bad is ever going to happen to these people so it is kind of unfortunate but I mean at the very least if you're a kid from Michigan then it would be cool to have something like this that you are uh that you're connected to you know like I've said in the past that I wish there was more stuff written that took place in Colorado and finally we have the Across the Street series now I can guarantee that the vast majority of you have never heard of this book series before because I finally got around to rating and reviewing the two books on Goodreads because I re-read them and I I'm the only person that's rated or reviewed either of them so basically unless you saw my reviews of those then you probably are not familiar with this series in the slightest uh I did mention it a few months ago though during my uh book uh my video on Christian books and why they're all terrible at the very end I mentioned that my sixth grade English teacher wrote a series of Christian goosebumps ripoffs and well that that's the Across the Street series now obviously I can't offer you any real proof that it was my English teacher that wrote these because these are the only two books he's ever written he's not well known and I certainly don't want to give away any of his personal information or my personal information not to mention I haven't talked to the dude in probably what 14 years but uh again I'm the only person that seems to know these exist so I think that is some evidence you'll just have to take my word for the rest but yeah like on the first day of school he when he was introducing himself to us he said yeah I'm actually a published author and if you're curious you can go check out some of my books over at the school library and I thought that was cool so I did exactly that and I read them when I was 11 I thought they were bad I just recently bought them again on Kindle and read them there and they're so terrible they're so bad like I tell you Christian Goosebumps horror ripoff and you're probably imagining something stupid but whatever you're imagining this is worse so the first book is called The Witch Across the Street and I think the setup for this one is pretty good it just follows a normal kid named Byron and he has a neighbor who's just an old spinster woman who lives by herself and no one really talks to her people think she's a witch people don't really like her and kids are afraid of her because they think she'll put a curse on them or something I think that's a solid setup for a book like this at least it's a solid setup if you set aside the fact that Byron spends like the first eight pages just describing his very mundane milk toast life in just a stupid amount of detail like I just mentioned a minute ago I wish there were more books that took place in Colorado well this series takes place in Denver and it does not make Denver seem very cool or exciting it's just like yeah I'm a kid in elementary school and I really like football and I have a leg which didn't develop properly so I have a limp and people make fun of me for that and like that's it he doesn't really have any personality beyond that but anyways the story gets started because Byron's mom has him bring cookies to the witch across the street or Byron and his sister I should say and I'm going to describe this very quickly and you're going to think I'm condensing things but I'm really not this kind of happens all at once so they go over there they find out that she's actually a Wiccan and rereading this today I was like oh I forgot about that they're gonna make it so that Wiccans are all actually secretly Satanists aren't they and at first I thought like oh okay they're actually pulling away from that because she was just going on about how oh no we're not bad people we just have respect for like Mother Earth and yada yada actually I'm actually not very familiar with the beliefs of Wiccans so I know they're not Satanists but I don't know if this book got them correct in that regard but basically yeah they they talk to her a bit about that and she gives them a Ouija board but it turns out she actually was a witch and she actually is possessed by a demon and so Byron plays with the Ouija board for a little while he accidentally summons some demons and the demons do bad things and they make his dad get in a car crash but he lives and then this book makes the the major mistake when Byron goes and tells his parents he's like hey um that lady actually is a witch and she gave us a Ouija board and then his mom freaks out on him and she says this is satanic Jesus wouldn't want this and then they bring in a pastor and he exercises the demons from their house and then he exercises the demons from the witch and pretty much the entire back half of the book is just Byron watching adults fix the problem and honestly that's that's the entire book right there like around 10% of it you might think I'm exaggerating but no around 10% of it is just either reciting bible verses or talking about God and not in like an interesting complex theological way which I I can get behind you know like I think discussions on nature of divinity and stuff can be really interesting even if I'm not a religious person but no it's just very standard surface level Jesus loves you and you need to let him into your heart or God will kill you I guess like just very basic stuff I'm really not leaving much out this thing is very short it barely breaks novella length like I am not just lying about this on Kindle like you can have it set so that it calculates a reading speed and tells you how much time you have left to finish this thing I read each of these in about an hour and like I read fast don't get me wrong but that is still crazy short like I know a lot of you probably aren't even going to believe me when I tell you that because I I do read really fast but I'm not skimming the pages or anything I'm reading every word on the page and it took me that little time it is it is very very short so there's no time to even gather up tension or to set up plot twists that happen it's just sort of like yep wickens are actually satanists and uh like I said it breaks the main rule it lets the kids go for help like the adults just fix everything and so it's very unsatisfying it is to forgive me for using this cliche but it is a deus ex machina like they literally just come along fix everything for the heroes and then the heroes just go home and that's just that's just not fun to read about like especially if you're trying to be a horror story or to have any sort of tension at all or have any sort of climax at all like you have to let your heroes stand on their own otherwise they don't really come across as heroes and that goes for all sorts of genres truth be told I wish I could say more about this but there's there's really not much there and then we have the sequel which is the magic store across the street which barely deals with the magic store at all but we'll just we'll set that aside and it starts off pretty much the same as the first book like where oh there's a normal kid living in denver and then nearby there's some sort of weird magical satanist that uh tempts them away from god or whatever but it it gets crazy it gets really crazy after a bit so without going into too much detail the main character you know starts worshiping satan by accident or whatever and then he starts acting out and his parents are very upset with him and I'm pretty sure that the author inserted his wife in here like his name is Casner Curran I mean as we'll just say like you you can find out on Goodreads or anything it's not giving away too much personal info I know but I'm pretty sure he put his wife in here at some point like I don't feel comfortable giving away more than that but there is a character I was like that really seems like his wife but anyways main character gets framed for being a drug dealer keep in mind he's like 13 so that's like not too unbelievable but it is a bit of a stretch and then he goes to jail and his parents and his therapist tell him about how hey accept Jesus into your heart bro and then you'll all be saved and he decides you know what yeah fine I'll accept Jesus back into my heart and then Jesus like comes down out of heaven and breaks him out of prison and starts shooting lasers at the guards and shooting lasers at demons and I was like what even the fuck is this I don't get what's happening is this a dream or something and then he breaks out and that's the end and here's the thing that's a lie like what I what I just told you that's not what happened everything after him being framed as a drug dealer and going to jail I made all that up but none of you are ever going to read it let's be on it not not a single one of you is going to come away from this and think oh yeah let's check out the magic store across the street James really gave that a glowing review like no you're all going to come away from this thinking well that sounds stupid but it was kind of fun to hear about and honestly the real ending is a lot more boring so just pretend that my ending is the canon one just go with that and uh I guess if Casner Curran sees this high how's it going bro hey guess what if you made it this far you are one of my best friends all the names you see here yeah those are my patron names especially the ten dollar and up guys those are the best ones and their names are Apocavillainan Olivia Rayan brother Santotys Carolina Clay Christopher Quinton Dan Antlasee Ciovic I hope I got that right Echo Joel Cartkat Kitsune Liza Rudikova Lord Tiebreaker Madison Wispenit Marilyn Roxy Microphone Sad Martigan Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie and Vaivictus you are all absolutely the best and all the other names on here also the best if you want to support the channel and get things like early access to videos then consider becoming a patron and if you don't feel like doing that then you can always just tip me over on PayPal become a channel member or just like this video and share it around comment on it subscribe to my channel you know all that stuff that I kind of need to eat so you know just do all that and you will also become my best friend that's right this isn't a parasocial relationship you are all actually my best friend you actually know me very well bye