So for one of the best sequel names of all time, if we get an eventual sequel name- Ah, this is so good! I wonder if there's one on K-pop? No, there's not. Well then, I guess I gotta do this myself. Uh, one- one week later... That was one long week of scripting. Anyways... K-pop summer. Wait, no. K-summer? Could that work? No. This! This comma was amazing! I don't know what could ruin this comma! Netizens get in a debate over IveMemberLisa's clueless concept after she says that she didn't know Pikachu. Well that just ruined my summer. What can I say? The K-pop summer of 2022 has ended and it has been amazing. We had some great songs and then we had this. Then we had more great songs! We've also had debuts that have been amazing. Chart-topping songs, bops, bangers, bad songs, redemption arcs, emo arcs. We also had an iconic giant make-a-come-back. And then we had this.  There's no way something I said did an age well, right? Right? We're true and not being forced to do older concepts. Cookie, not the food. Yes, an underage girl group made an innuendo song about their private parts by calling it a cookie, which makes me feel sick hearing about it. But attention is the summer song of the year! Let's go! Everything about attention is just fresh and when you listen to it for your first time, you are going to be blown away. From the delicate harmonies from new jeans voices, to the fact that they are just a group of friends hanging out and they're not even wearing makeup, they're not going for a perfection music video. They're just the teenagers they are meant to be. Just everything about this is fresh for the K-pop industry and I hope it's more like this to come. But then we have Cookie and I'm just here like... Yeah, it's time for me to cheer up. But what could possibly cheer me up? If only Ghost Generation had it come back. Oh, Ghost Generation had a comeback. An iconic legend came back! Now that cheers me up. But this song kind of sounds like one of those survival show songs. Ever since I made that discovery, the song has just been funny to me, but it's still so good. But I am happy they are back. Oh nice, Blackpink broke a new record. I'm so proud of them.  No way, what? No, I'm doing so many.  Blackpink broke even more records. I don't know how they keep breaking records and records, but what I do know is that they release good music. Oh, maybe that's why they break records. Because they release good music. But we don't talk about Pink Venom. I prefer my Niccolò Paganini hype music over Pink Venom, so you know it is what it is, so... But you know what? I'm actually getting tired of hype music. That's all we see now. It's everywhere. I just want something more relaxing. Woohoo! Yeah, let's go! Oh, what am I saying?  Yeah, what am I saying? I would always love Hype Trash. And NCT 127 delivers that with this song. But then we have this.  So I'm going to break this down for you. A Korean elf is selling Jajangmyeon on the streets. And then she bumps into this guy. The guy is mad. She is sad. So she follows him. How bad can it get? Our Korean elf waits for him to sleep. She then nabs them nails, takes his money, and he wakes up. So what does she do?  And then we find out she's a cult leader, and she burns the fingernails. Then everyone dances. The end. So what's the lesson learned from this? Don't mess with Jajangmyeon, street sellers in Korea. Dance queen. Damn!  I wonder what the most replayed part of the song is. Dang! First time watches be like. Let me get them nails. Nah, but for Rosies, I'm going to be keeping an eye on these guys for more amazing music videos and abs. Because this is just so mesmerizing to watch the abs. Hey! Our favorite mix-gendered group is back! Well, they're the only mix-gendered group. So that means they're gonna obviously be the favorite mix-gendered group. But they are back and that's so good. Because it's been two years since their last release, and I was kind of scared we wouldn't get any more of KARD. I was worried. Thanks KARD for coming back. Thank you so much. Okay, okay, okay. I might be cheating here, but this group debuted one day, okay? One day before summer. So I might just be super kind to them. But super kind debuted with an AI member, and it's so unique.  And the other members, they're also doing such a great job. And the music video quality is just so good. But that AI, the editing done by the editors, that is insane how they managed to rotoscope around the members for the AI called Say Jin. But this song is also really, really catchy. And it's got my favorite editing sequence in all 105 music videos I went through for this video. This group is just so cool, and I can't wait to hear their future songs. I'm just surprised that they only have one million views. Oh yeah, Ace became back. And the MV is cool. But this song, which sucks, but life's too short. That song is amazing. I just wish I could have like girls. But oh well. I think it's fine for me to not like every song. Within a two minute and 49 second music video, we got to hear pop 82 times. 82 times. Yeah, and that's because it's catchy. Alrighty, okay, okay. It's just a phase. But yo, this is fire. I didn't expect this from J-Hope, and it was just good. Yo, when it is back, we need more music videos like this. Not just dramatic over the top epic music videos, okay? So sometimes you just got to watch the music video for the music video. I would love to watch a full featured movie of this music video. And this is my first time listening to Tiger JK, and I'm a fan. But the acting in this is so good. Like, can we please have a movie with Tiger JK as a lead actor? Like bro, he is just like John Wick. The action scenes are just so impactful. And this is just one of my favorite discoveries I've made for this video. It goes for five minutes and 39 seconds, but it goes by so fast. How much cooler can a music video get? Yo, this looks so badass. We have honey copters in cars. How more badass can it be? Oh, what does that say? Great guys had their identities as vampires and live as bodyguards to protect the girls they love. God, is this song good? Yeah, it's not bad. So somebody released another good song to listen to. Keeping up a mortal queen who experienced the death of all of her lovers, which is extremely sad. But this song though, it good. Well that's good, because I'm a nerd. This comedy horror music video is just a fun watch. And I've come back to it quite a few times because I have a fun time watching this music video and the song is really good. Like bro, another new group with a cool concept? I am winning with my discoveries. I would love more songs like this please.   Wait, isn't almost every boy group of the fourth generation released only hype songs? And the girl groups have released more versatile music? It's a bit odd, isn't it? Woo hoo hoo, yeah this is so funny. Doom doom, yeah you hit that bass. Chewie, you can hit me too. Okay, but twice just knows how to make good music and they always deliver it to us. It's just so catchy. Ooh, a QR code. Where does it go? Okay, okay, huh. Yosh, I love that line in the song. It feels so real, so emotional, so free real estate. But seriously, this song is about being in love with someone who is ultimately hurting them. Like a beautiful monster. But damn, Jolly Wally, gosh, I love this song a lot. And you know what else I like? People were in underwear jumping in the forest. So many nail clippings to collect for my rat evolution. But seriously, sometimes a nice beautiful slow song is what you need in order this hype, energetic music that we get. And the Rose released a song that is just so relaxing, which has one of the most beautiful set of lyrics that I have listened to. This gentle song is something that my heart needed. A soft emotional moment. But underwear, people! You can always rely on Zeko to release sensational music for you to listen to, especially during an apocalypse. But doing this video, I discovered some undiscovered gems. So, doesn't that make them discovered now? But it's truly amazing being able to find songs like this through the massive wave of music that we get every week that swallows everyone that is smaller than them. And it really makes you want to focus not only on your faves. I'm aiming that at you, you solo stands. But to actually discover that there are hidden gems that almost no one on the 7.7 billion populated planet has listened to. So I put all these songs in a playlist and I really hope that you give these songs a chance for how good they are. There's just so much more out there and I am pleased to be able to share these gems with you. Legitimately, some of them have been the best songs that I have found and they can have less than 1000 views. Music's not about popularity, it's about art. People sharing it with you and not caring about numbers. But damn, it's time for the community pics. This is where I went to YouTube and Twitter and asked you for your favorite songs of this summer. So let's see what you've picked. Oh, well let's see if my second tweet did any good. Well, I can always rely on my YouTube posts, right? Oh, well there's always a next time, right? Yeah, I wish I could talk about a lot more songs that appeared during summer but I had to cut it down from 105 to around 20 songs, which was hard. But you should be able to listen to all 105 songs in a playlist that I made for you over on Spotify. And I hope you all had a good coming like I did. And I shall see you guys next time. Peace. Hey, thank you for watching the video all the way up to this point past the Patreon outro. What is looking gonna be talking about? A couple things. First one. This might be one of my last Kpop videos if it doesn't do that well. Because I have spent a lot of hours on this video and if it doesn't do well, like I don't know, like 10,000 plus views, I'm gonna be a bit upset because I have spent three weeks on this video. Almost four? But also it is also my part of the job to try and get the whole title, thumbnail and all that stuff where I would help get it onto the algorithm. But it's just really disappointing when I spend like almost a month on a video and it does not so well. And speaking of not so well, someone's got a loud car. I found a lump on one of my testicles and I've gone to the doctors but it took me a few weeks to get to that point. I was scared, nervous, embarrassed and I shouldn't have been. I should have gone straight to the doctors, got it checked. I got an ultrasound on Tuesday and a few days from now so hopefully that will be fine. Hopefully I'll be good. But if not, oh well, it's a battle I got to win. But the reason why I'm telling you this is because I want you to check yourself, you know. If you're a female, check what you got to check in a male, if you have to check your walls, just do it. It takes like a few seconds and if you find a lump, don't be afraid like I did. Don't hide in fear, just don't. It's not fun. Just go straight to a doctor. The moment I have finished that appointment, so much stress and anxiety just dissipated. Disappeared? Disappeared from me. So I kind of want you guys to do the same. If you find something wrong with you, go to a doctor and don't live in fear, please. And the reason why I have a beard right now is because of the anxiety and stress. I just don't want to shave. I don't want to really do much. It's a bit depressing and all that stuff. I'm still scared, but not as scared as I was. But yeah, those are the two things. This might be one of my last K-pop videos if it doesn't do well. And then I was just sending you guys, just do a check on yourself.  I want to spread awareness because I had no idea that would happen to me. I'm a kind of healthy male, kind of. So in a few weeks, if this video hasn't done that well, I'll still be working on a K-pop video after this one. But if it hasn't, then I'll be most likely just starting to work on my anime opening videos, talking about the song so that just new Japanese releases. I'll be moving to Japanese music, basically. As much as I love K-pop, I don't think my content is suited for K-pop because it's not reactions. They're generally people like people who do this. Wow, awesome! Whoa, you slay it. But yeah, because of K-pop mainly being about reactions and then K-pop news, I feel like there's just no future for this channel if I want to continue to make content like this. But yes, other than that, hopefully you all have a great day. Keep smiling, check yourself, wherever you need to check yourself, like up here or down there. Just check. Be healthy. I love you guys and peanut butter.


Right now in the United States, one in six Americans is not talking to a close friend or family member because of politics. We find that family schisms are at an all-time high. And the result is that people are suffering just completely unnecessarily. It's like people don't know the rules anymore. It's like, I'm going to step over $100 bills to get to Nichols.  It's just so crazy. It's like we forgot all of these basics of what brings that how human love brings happiness to us. So that's one of the reasons that Oprah and I wrote that chapter is that everybody comes to us and is talking to us about this. It's like, ah, I haven't talked to my parents. I haven't talked to my children.  I'm thinking, no way, man. No way. I said, why? He says, well, we just didn't see eye to eye. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Growing up, I remember spirited political discussions around the holidays. We had family members on both sides and they'd argue and yell, and then they'd hug it out and go on their merry way. And we'd see each other again the next holiday. It was not this complete schism and separate from one another based on politics. Yeah. Our families are microcosms of what's actually happening to our country and to our world right now, which is being pulled apart for a lot of different reasons. One is that people are predatory. Leaders and media are predatory, and the more we hate, the more they profit, the less happy we are. And there's technology that's actually accelerating these trends, and this is a huge problem. Man, we need a love rebellion in this world is what we need. Well, we've been laughing about that internally because we found that our negative show titles perform better than the positive ones. And we're a show about bringing positivity, but it doesn't lead to the clicks and downloads. I know. So what we should call this one, this is going to be all about positivity and love, but let's call it how to hate your enemies more effectively. There we go. So there was something very brilliant right that you just said, and I was talking to AJ about this earlier when we were prepping for this interview, which is if we're going to discuss love in such a way, then what we have is people that we care immensely about and we need to protect them. And the only way to protect them is with intolerance, to which that would harm them. I know. It's crazy. I've been getting a little bit dismayed with some of the guests who come on, and it's always about this love. And but we need to protect our family, which we're now discussing is how important it is to us. But also as we're developing, we find out what our core values are. Those core values propel us into our best self. And if you are not ready and able to protect those core values with intolerance or hate, you will be subjected by outside forces that will work to destroy you. Right. Now, this is all true. And the truth of the matter is, of course, we have values, and that's a very good thing to have. But here's the point. When you have values, they should be only ever used as a gift and never as a weapon. You've eviscerated the moral content of your opinions and your values and your, I mean, all of your beliefs. If you use them as a cudgel, you can say, oh, I have these beliefs about my politics or my religion, whatever it is to be.  Well, guess what? That was not effective as a gesture of love. Quite the contrary. You have to understand that it only ever works as a gift, never as a weapon. And that's what people are being encouraged to forget, quite frankly. They're saying, if you have these views, if you have these values, if somebody disagrees with you, you need to cancel them, you need to get them out of your life. But those are the people who are encouraging you to do that.  What I'm really curious about your perspective on is, so looking at the family unit and love and bringing positivity to those around us, there's this growing virtual world that we're all exposing ourselves to where most of this hate and intolerance lies. But we're not sharing that even with family members. We'll be on our screen separately at the dinner table. I was traveling across Europe and I didn't see as many screens, but in the US, if you go out to dinner, you see the parents are on their phones. My wife and I will turn to each other, we'll look and then the kids are on their iPads and they're living in a virtual world that isn't supporting this love, isn't supporting each other. It's full of hate, full of negativity, but they're not actually sharing what they're seeing and consuming that's then leading to these ideas internally, the struggle, and ultimately this unhappiness. To understand that phenomenon, we've got to get back to the basic neuroscience of what's happening and how we're being manipulated in terms of our neurophysiology. So if I said, hey, AJ, I got a strategy for you for how to get your calories and become healthy. Eat every meal at McDonald's. You'd be like, yeah, crazy, that's insane, because it's nothing wrong with McDonald's from time to time, but if you eat every meal at McDonald's, you're going to get too many calories, not enough nutrients, you'll become malnourished and obese at the same time, and you'll be constantly hungry because your body's going to be craving all your macronutrients that you need in balance and abundance. That's the same thing as what's happening to us when we're tied to our devices. Why? Because the one thing we really need from our family relationships, and for that matter from any relationships, is a neuropeptide in the brain that functions as a hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is the hormone of human bonding. It's intensely pleasurable.  A neuroscientist will say that so you don't leave the baby on the bus or something, but the truth of the matter is it's magic. It's actually magic. We crave oxytocin with our family members, with our friends, with our close associates, with our kin, with our people, is what it comes down to. Now, what happens is when we have social media, we think that it's going to give us what we need because it's kind of a social contact, but oxytocin comes from eye contact and human touch. Social media is basically the McDonald's fries and milkshakes of social life is what it comes down to. The problem is you don't get what you need, but you get addicted.


I don't know what we're doing. What are we doing? Yeah, that's true, you're not that bright. Ha ha ha ha ha! I was in here for that. Yup.  It's I'm Corbin. I'm Rick, hi. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, for more juice content. Send me a picture of that. I'll send you a picture of that. Bang! It's also on personal YouTube channels and just a description below. Do it. Today we're doing a movie review of the new 2021 film, Toofan. Toofan. Toofan. Toofan. The storm. There's a Toofan. I think it's Toofan. Obviously, highly anticipated. Especially by us. We, trailer came out a long time ago. It got pushed back. It was supposed to have the theatrical release. Love the trailer. Obviously ended up being released on OTT platforms. Amazon specifically. It is a Farhan Akht plays a boxer in a fictional drama. That's a synopsis. That's it. Farhan Akht plays a boxer in a fictional drama. Great synopsis. Makes me wanna watch. I'm gonna pitch that to producers. Directed by, say his name. Directed by Rakesh Ombrakesh Mera. Who also did Bog Muckabog. And we loved Bog Muckabog. And what was Rangavisanti? I bet he was part of the team. Oh no, he directed it. What the flying malarkies? Oh, I did not know that. Me too. I thought it was just Bog Muckabog. Me too. So Rangavisanti and Bog Muckabog, both we loved. And produced by Farhan starring Farhan Akhtar and a couple other people. Ronald Sucker. Ronald Sucker. Parish Rubble. And then, they all just say actor. This is like one of the worst IMDb's. Like it doesn't even say the characters. There's no synopsis in the thing. Anyways, but yeah, it just came out. So normally we do complete spoiler reviews, but since it's new, we'll do a small non-spoiler review. And then we'll get into the more spoilers. Yes. Just so you're aware, in case you wanted to go watch it, it's on Amazon. Which many of you, I think, have even watched the spoiler. Yeah, probably. Rick, your initial non-spoiler thoughts, please. Initial non-spoiler thoughts. We say a lot of the time that don't judge a film by its trailer, but just sometimes bad trailers become good films and good trailers become bad films. This is one of those versions where for this film, I felt the trailer was way better than the movie. Yeah. Yep, I feel, without giving anything away, it's an extremely average to mediocre at times boxing film with good performances by Farhan. And I feel like the main problem with this film is the writing in terms of dialogue and plot, which I feel like they didn't try very much. But yeah, so that's basically the non-spoiler review. That's the non-spoiler review. If you want to watch a boxing film, I might suggest if you haven't seen Rocky or Raging Bull. I can give you a slew of them. Or even Creed. Rocky I, II, III, IV, Rocky Balboa, Creed, Cinderella Man, Raging Bull, The Champ, Warrior for MMA Fighting, those are all head and shoulders better. And okay, I don't want to say this is a totally bad film. I just, because we've seen bad films and everything I'm watching is like, this is awful. This is just, in my opinion, extremely predictable and mediocre. Like it's extremely middle of the road. There was something, I put this in here because I've started to delineate basically the 10 areas that we critique consistently. There's pretty much 10 areas that we critique. We critique the story and the script above all, right? And believability is really something we talk about. Acting, direction, cinematography, art direction, production design, the score, visual effects and stunt work, costumes, makeup and hair. But there was something about this one that what I'm about to say is frustrating, but it wouldn't have made a difference. I don't know if it's Amazon or the censor board, but these were the worst subtitles I've ever seen in any of the films we've seen in any of my far now. They weren't even remotely close to what they were saying because a lot of the time, they're talking in English. And even when they were talking in English, the sentence coming out of their mouth wasn't anywhere remotely close to what was being said on the bottom.  But that's not, I don't think that has anything to do with the film. That's either Amazon's subbing or the censor board's subbing, but that is one giant problem with it. If you're not Hindi speaking, you're gonna be distracted by the subtitles in this pretty much an hot stop. Yeah, so it was a big let down for me. It was a big let down. I had big expectations for it. So if that's the non spoiler view, we'll get into the rest of it now. But if you haven't watched it and you wanna go watch it, go watch it and then come back if you don't wanna be spoiled, if you don't care, stick around. But let's talk about the stuff I did. I thought Farhan did a very good job with what he had. Like I feel it wasn't his fault that the film, cause I feel like if he was given a good script in terms of not only plot, but also dialogue, he could have been one of his best performances in terms of like if he had that, but he had such like a vanilla script. It was like each thing that came on the script was like just the further along the script, nothing, it was like, none of it was organic. I knew every single thing that was coming. So like if this was like directed and written by like Anurag, it would have been like all natural dialogue. There would have been some creativity in the writing. And I feel like he put enough into it that it would have been elevated obviously with a much better script. I think as far as he's concerned, you're letting him off the hook per se. So here's why. First of all, Also, did you change the language? Did I change the language? No, the original language that was on Amazon was English for some reason, dubbed English. Oh, I didn't watch it. Dubbed. Okay, good. I watched it in Hindi, good. The original line, I turned it on. It was English dubbed.  Like it would do with Sacred Games. Right, right, right. No, no, no, I'm not changing it. I was just making sure. No, it was that, but I did notice and it could have been just, I don't know. And the first, there were a couple of moments where the sound wasn't matching. And I think that just may have been a technical glitch. I don't know if that was the finished copy. But here's why I think he wasn't Farhan off the hook.  We think he's a really solid actor, bog milk a bog proof that he could portray a character from history in a way where he fully embodies the disciplines of the character as an athlete, which is one of the reasons we were so excited. The reason I feel like he's, you're letting off the hook per se is he produced this thing. So he's got the control. If he didn't like the script, he could change it because he's the one right in check. Oh yeah, oh no, I'm not talking about the film as a whole, the film as a whole, I agree. But his performance, I thought he did a good job in terms of like he was my favorite part of the entire thing. Like I could watch him and I was like, at least he's putting on a good performance. I'm not talking like it's not like Fafa and anything, but he's at least put on a good performance. And I thought it could have been way better if like I think the creative team in the writing did any kind of create, like produced anything that wasn't just everything that's been in a boxing film ever before. Yeah, the story and the script, there wasn't anything original about it. None. There was nothing original about the fight sequences. All the cliches. Yeah, the fight sequences, as far as the way they were shot, we saw that 40 years ago in all the Rocky films. Yeah. And also there were some technical aspects of the fighting that were annoying to me because they weren't accurate when you, the reason I can say I know that is because the only thing besides baseball I have followed closely as a sport, really closely is combat sports. Boxing as a kid. And then when MMA we got really big, but I still three or four nights a week, I'm watching either kickboxing, MMA or occasionally some boxing. So there were some technical aspects. He, there were two, it felt some, you know what it felt like to me sometimes for him? Ben Stiller got on this kick where he was doing films and it felt like he was doing them just cause he wanted everybody to see how in shape he was. Ben Stiller? Ben Stiller. He did a couple of films where he was built. Really? And he wanted everybody to know he could do it. Yeah. Ben Stiller. What films are you talking about? Well, first of all, Tropic Thunder. Oh, that's a comedy though. I know, but. I love that movie. I do too. I love that movie. But in that era is when he got in this kick of doing things where he was pumped up and butt. The other thing is the believability factor, that's the biggest thing for, I've got 11 notes about the lack of believability. And one of them is I, okay, granted, we don't know about the boxing circles in India, but nobody his age is going to be taken seriously as a starting off boxer ever. He was definitely too old. He would be laughed out of the gym as what are you even thinking about? Unless you're Floyd Mayweather fighting a YouTuber. Yeah. But then at that point, you're Floyd Mayweather. Yeah. Yeah. So the person I actually, I felt like I wanted to say, you know, if she was watching, I'd say I see you is Ronald, if I'm mispronouncing your name. The love interest? Yeah. I felt like she did even, I felt like she for me did the best with what she was given. Well, I thought her, and I liked the coach as well for the most part. I saw some of the writing that happened with every single character. A lot of it was extremely cheesy. It just can't get past that.  My God. Like he comes on, I'm like, oh cool, VJ Roz. I know. He's doing a great job. I know. I love his character. He's in four scenes, probably total of four minutes, and they bring him back at the end like I'm supposed to have cared in the beginning. Like why is VJ Roz back? I know. I know. Oh, it was so frustrating. Yeah. The fact like, this was one of the most, I don't, it feels like they didn't put any creativity in the writing. No, it felt heavy-handed. Yeah. And then I mean that in a good way for a fighting film. It felt heavy-handed. Even for example, when the coach and his buddy start talking about ordering Chinese food and that becomes a religious bigotry issue, I felt like that trying to infuse the religious bigotry underneath it, I knew the issue way ahead of time. I was like, okay, yeah, we're gonna have an issue by the fact that he doesn't know that's the dad and he doesn't know. There's a religion. Yeah, yeah. He comes in in the end and of course he wins in the end. He comes back after five years, apparently wins it all. Perfectly good shape after three months. There's apparently no other good boxers. Yeah, and I also felt we could have found a more creative way to kill her than just a bridge collapsing. Yeah. I would have, there are so many different things I think would have contributed to this and had such high hopes for it. And you have to compare films about fighting in any way, shape or form with the other films that have come in the past that have been so great. And the ones we just listed before, the list I went through of Cinderella and Warrior, and what makes them great, isn't just. I mean, it's kind of a foregone. The fighting sequences and the technical aspects have to be believable. That's just like, that's us to give the film a pulse. But this didn't even have good fights. Really? Exactly. There was a few good moments at the end in terms of some of the fights, but that's about it. No. And I'm like nitpicking at that point and I'm like, I'm trying to find something good with the fights. Really? Because like with a boxy film you at least need to have a good fight. Right. And I feel like they cut away a lot of the times. They used the ropes to distract a lot of the punching was to the, so many times punches were thrown where it was intentionally just, I'm going to punch you in the shoulder. Yeah.  So, and again, we root for movies. We don't want movies to be bad. You know we were looking forward to this and wanted to be good. We want every movie we see to be spectacular. We don't want a bad movie to be made. But even there was nothing, I don't have any notes at all for cinematography, art directions, score. The score was, I think bad. I did not like the score. It was too melodramatic at times. And all the songs in there, didn't need them. They were forgettable. Yeah, the musical numbers. I agree. Didn't need them and they were all forgettable. Yeah, I agree. And I didn't like, like cause a lot of times they did it in Drisheum as well. Drisheum too. Yes. Where they tried to put this big emotional thing behind what should bring out your emotion. I was like, stop it. Right. Please. So I just, like I just don't know what, if they were just trying to put out a boxing movie maybe? Like there was like, we have Farhan. I want to do a boxing film. Who cares about the rest? I don't, I just don't think Farhan would do that. I didn't think he was a guy, you know? Here's the thing. So some of you may even put this in the comments. We know he's 47, okay? We know he's in spectacular shape for a man of his age.  Freaking do it. I get it. Make a boxing film. However, what I was expecting from the trailer, I was genuinely thinking that this guy was a legit down and out guy. Like even in Rocky, he's too old and he's 27. Yeah. You know? He's like a washed up has been at 27. So I was expecting maybe this guy to have been like a Mike Tyson, really bad part of town. Really bad kid who grew up and is beyond the age of a Mike Tyson. No one ever gave him a shot, but he was heavy handed.  And you get this story of a guy that should have had a shot and you're rooting for him. And the girlfriend is the only one who sees it. And she has to convince her dad, the coach, I see something in him. Yeah, but he's a, he's just, he wouldn't bring in the religious aspects of who he is as a Muslim. And then get him to the place where he actually loses. Yeah. But had a shot. And the end is they're in love with each other cause ultimately it was about her belief in him that got him to change his life.  And he's so easily through it. It just, it just everything was too easy. Yeah. It was extremely predictable. Yeah. Extremely. Like they just watched all the other boxing films and tried to piece it together and be like, yeah, we'll put that in there. Like, that's all I can say. It's like extremely average to mediocre film. But I did for my takeaway from this as far as the thing I liked most, which is there wasn't much that I liked. I saw the potential in and I saw this in the trailers. I saw both of them, but we expect that from Farhan cause we know him. But since I don't know her very well, I see her, I see an actress there that if she's given something of substance and given something that's written really, really well, I think she could shine brightly. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think she definitely had a great presence. Yeah. I think if this was in the hands of somebody who would make it a grittier film, it could have been there. Obviously Farhan can definitely bring a performance. At least believable. Yeah. But this was just- Grit would have been a nice addition, you know? Yeah. Especially for fighters. It just seemed like they just wanted to put out a boxing film and they didn't really care. Yeah. It's unfortunate because I was really looking, I even said in the trailer, I was like, this looks like it could be the best film of the year. Yeah. Did not. I was ready to put songs in my playlist from this thing. Nope. But that's not happening. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. So sorry. We love you Farhan. Yeah. Oh, we love you Farhan. We really do. Please come talk to us for one. Yeah. And let us know what the next Farhan Akhtar film should be that we should watch. Because we've actually only seen what? Two or three. Three or something? This, this, obviously, Bog Mokobog. He was in, what was the last one we just saw? Luck by Chance. Luck by Chance. And then the other one- Deborah. He's in Deborah. And he's also in, we've seen at least five. At least five Farhan films. At least five. But obviously he's been around a long time. We need to see a lot more. So let us know what you thought about this film and what should be the next Farhan Akhtar film we watch down below.


Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we're drinking Salem's Smoked Porter. Nice! Today we're going to be covering 1988's Maniac Cop. Maniac Cop is directed by William Lustig, who directed the great horror movie that we've already covered, Maniac. Mm-hmm. This movie is written by Larry Cohen, who wrote and directed many great schlocky horror movies. It's alive, the stuff in the list goes on and on. Oh yeah, for sure. The ladies man, Tom Atkins is in this, he stars in this. How can you go wrong with that already? Bruce Campbell is in this, and Sam Raimi makes a small appearance too. Maniac Cop starts off with his waitress walking home after her shift at some sick seedy bar. Yeah. Gets attacked by a couple of muggers, and she runs away, runs, runs, runs, and finally comes across this cop in the park. He's all in shadows. She's happy to see him, too, right? He's helpful, thank you, thank you. And this cop just picks her up right off the ground and breaks her neck, and the muggers are like, Oh, yeah, it scares them.  We're introduced to Lieutenant McRae, and he's investigating the murder scene. He's talking to the thugs that saw this, and they're like, oh man, it was a cop, man, it was a cop that killed her. He goes to a superior, and he's like, yeah, I think we might have a killer cop on our hands. And the superior's like, no, no, don't even think about that. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. If I stay out, Rebecca and so. But in the meantime, the killings continue. This maniac cop keeps killing, and they realize all we might have a killer cop on our hands. We're introduced to Jack Forrest, who's getting ready to do some overtime. His wife is suspicious of him, and he's walking to work. But he doesn't go to work.  With some bunny cop. I can explain. So she gets pissed off and storms out. The next day, who do they find dead in a motel? Well, Forrest's wife is dead in the hotel. The same hotel room that she found him in. Honest citizens are getting scared and trigger happy, too, right? At the honest cops, and they're starting to kill them. Yeah, there's that great senior that cop knocks on that woman's door. Yeah. Blows him away.  Forrest is arrested for the murder of his wife, and while Lieutenant McCrae and that chief of police guy, if you were home, your wife would not have suspected you. Lieutenant McCrae starts to realize that it's got to be somebody else, right?  And all of that leads McCrae into the records department of the building, where he starts to learn a little more about cops who are having these sort of mental problems, mental breakdowns. And he suspects that somebody is leaking information to this maniac cop, and he's starting to suspect that it's this woman who's running the records department. One night he follows her. He runs into the security guard, too, who's in Beverly Hills Cop 2. He does actually see the woman from the records department interacting with maniac cop. I need you. You need me. Lieutenant McCrae confronts the woman in the records department, and she actually gets pissed off and starts beating them all up with this crotch. His hand gets all busted.   He starts killing cops one by one, and that's where we're going to end the story. If you want to see what's going to happen with Forrest, Lieutenant McCrae, Records Woman, and even maniac cop, keep watching because it'll keep you on the edge of your seat. Did he used to have maniac cop on VHS? Yeah. I bought it in a big lot, and the whole lot was moldy. That's right, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, you did take it a little too far with the open casket viewing and whatnot. Justin, goodbye to the VHS. Good boy. Good boy. Mold. $22 has got mold on it, oh my VHS. First thing we have to say about this movie is it's a fantastic story. The story is actually for a horror slasher type movie, pretty interesting and a little convoluted. There's a lot of twists and turns, and there's this whole investigation which keeps you intrigued. It's even neat how all the evidence is always linking to Bruce Campbell's character Forrest. Everything leads to him, so it's really well written. Always to keep you enthralled, and the pacing really helps with that too, right? All the killings mostly happen in the beginning of the movie. High body count, early, then story and mystery and character building and finding out what's really happening. And then at the end, again, it ramps right up, right? The casting is fantastic for this movie. Tom Atkins, how can you beat Tom Atkins? He's a perfect person to cast for the kind of broken down, disgruntled cop. Heavy drinking cop. Heavy drinking doesn't really trust the system anymore.  Spreading his wings, right? He's not playing ass, he's not playing that type of character, it's a bit more dramatic for him. Get to see that he actually can act.  Yeah, he's not camping it up at all in this, it's all serious. Exactly. He does a great job of playing it serious. And Robert Zdarski as the maniac cop, again perfect casting.  He was diagnosed with chubberism. So basically like these glands or whatever keep growing in your face and he's got this big kind of face but it's just perfect. He's perfect for roles like this. The same way where people like Ron Perlman, he's perfect for like monster roles. And the great thing they do with maniac cop too is they don't show his face until the end. They keep him in the shadows, you have no clue what he looks like. You know he's got a big chin and jaw, which is great for Bruce Campbell being the fall guy. Exactly. Because he's got the big chin, right? So it's really perfect. And when you find out the whole backstory, what happened to maniac cop, then they show his face. So I love how they save the revealing of maniac cop till the really bitter end. They play that up so good. They keep maniac cop in the shadows and they keep it dark. And you're always wondering, who is this? Is it somebody on the force? You don't know that it's maybe somebody that's not on the force, imitating a cop? Or is it a cop? Yeah, you don't know. You don't know because they keep the guy in the shadows. And the setting is great too. Just like maniac. It's directed by the same director as maniac. All the locations in this are kind of dark and gritty and seedy. The seedy motel, seedy bars. Even the police station has a bit of like seedyness to it.  Everything about this is kind of ugh. Yeah, it sort of makes you uneasy. The mystery behind this movie is pretty good too. Like the whole investigative side of it that Tom Atkins is doing is really good. It grips you in too, right? It grips you in more so than the killings. There's all these red herrings that are pointing to different people in the department or maybe outside and he's the one uncovering everything and you're always on the edge of your seat because he's going out following up on the leads too, right? Putting himself in danger. The dialogue in this movie is great too. A lot of great little scenes like between Tom Atkins and that sergeant guy at the bar. Just little interactions which are really good with great dialogue that doesn't seem cheesy even though it's kind of maniac-cop, a cheesy movie, you know? But the dialogue is not cheesy whatsoever. Actually, the dialogue is very realistic in a movie where it's kind of over the top, right? It makes sense that everybody's real in this. Yeah, everyone is real, everyone seems real. The whole cop aspect of this movie is really cool too. People trust police, policemen. They're gonna come up to you and he just takes them out. And also the weapons that he uses, right?  And then it gets flipped on its side, right? Where all these killings are happening and suddenly people stop trusting cops. Exactly, yeah. And that's a real life issue too. It's kind of dealing with these real life issues like corrupt cops. Yeah, over the top. People not trusting cops, you know, that still is a thing, right? Corrupt cops. It's abuse of power, right? It's always been a thing and it kind of deals with that. It touches on it and uses it to build whore. This movie has got tons of Evil Dead cameos which is cool. Of course Bruce Campbell is the main character, Sam Raimi is a cameo, and Dan Hicks who plays Jake in Evil Dead 2 is in this as well. Bobby Joel!  And this movie has a lot of no way out situations which is great. Like there's a lot of situations in this movie, you're like, how are they getting out? Yeah, you are trapped.  And it teases a lot of things too. This movie teases you in so many places. You know, even with Bruce Campbell. It teases Bruce Campbell. Everyone knows Bruce Campbell. It teases the first scene with him. They don't show his face until he leaves the room. The kills for this movie are awesome. There's that one kill early on in the beginning where he does a routine traffic stop, taps on the window, and you know, of course, they're trusting of the police. The guy gets out and he pulls his knife out, slashes his throat, and then throws the guy right into the windshield. He's all super strong. And just the guy just flies. You get all the blood on the windshield. It looks like it's a great shot. Stalks that guy and, like, the guy trips in that wet cement, pushes his face in that wet cement, and it just cuts to, like, the daytime and it's dry. They're all jackhammering the guy out. And then, of course, when he takes out the whole police force, it's fantastic. And the music for this movie is awesome, really. Like, they do such a good job. Exactly what you need for a movie like this. It's dark, so you need a lot of low-tone synths. Then at the end of the awesome finale, that big action-packed finale, the music gets all, like, kind of more cop-style, action-cop-chase music. So it really fits every scene perfectly. And it's a perfect 80s synth score. Exactly. So if you want a movie that combines the slasher genre, the cop genre, and the action genre all in one, Maniac Cop is like the perfect combination of all those things. It does them all really well. Exactly. It's got Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell in it. Like, you can't go wrong. They're almost like the B-Hore movie dream team. The only complaint I have about this movie is I wish Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins had more screen time together. Yeah. Right? They don't interact much. They don't act as a team too much. Until next time, keep drinking.


The mbn-slash-pnf nanocomposite paper with necromimetic layered structures prepared via SoulGel film transformation approach exhibits excellent thermal conductivity, electrical insulation, mechanical properties, and thermal stability. This article was authored by Lin Tang, Kuan Peng Juan, Shilu, and others.


Okay, so why is it that we're discussing Keynesianism and the post-war boom, you know, why is this important to us today? I think it's probably fair to say it was the longest generalized boom in the whole history of capitalism. You had a period of about 28 years or so from 1945 to 1973, although it wasn't simply just one straight line upwards, it wasn't, you know, there were still minor sort of ups and downs. It was probably the greatest explosion of investment, production, trade, science and technique in all of human history. I think the only really comparable period would have been from sort of the end of the 1870s to about 1914, but I think even then it didn't match the scale of the post-war boom. And why it's important is it's inevitably shaped the consciousness of a whole generation of people who lived through that, and also many people as well who didn't live through it, but sort of, you know, told about this for all sorts of ways, you know, whether it's through literature or films or, you know, ideas in the labour movement.  But I think actually, if you look at it, there's an element of truth in that. You know, if you compare it to today, living standards were increasing and fairly rapidly.  And this also gave the illusion that capitalism was actually able to produce the goods. You know, it was a system that could actually provide a decent standard of living to the working class. And for many, this actually represents, like, the normality of capitalism. They think that, like, that is what the capitalist system is, and that actually what came afterwards with the crisis and everything since then is really some sort of deviation, and that if we just had the correct sort of policies, we could return to these conditions and everything would be fine. But actually, what I want to argue is this really was like a kind of unique period in history, and particularly in the history of capitalism, and that it was made possible by the coming together of various kind of unique factors, primarily the impacts of the Second World War, but also, you know, political factors as well, such as the betrayal of social democracy and the Stalinists after the war. You also see on the left today, you hear these kind of arguments, well, you know, if in Britain we could run a huge deficit after the war and create the NHS and the welfare state and all these other things, couldn't we do the same now? And I think, you know, as Marxists, we have to understand, well, okay, if this is the case, then we have to explain why hasn't it been done now? Or, alternatively, if this isn't true, if it's not possible to do that, we need to be able to understand why that's the case and actually be able to offer the counter arguments when we hear these things being raised, you know, whether it's in the student movement, labour movement, or whatever. And there's also this idea that kind of flows from that, which is that, you know, austerity and also what's referred to as neoliberalism is just simply some kind of, like, nasty or kind of evil ideology. And what we just need is policies for growth, what they're really saying, what we need is, like, Keynesian policies. And that, I would argue, is the real essence, the real meaning of the core binomics. And therefore, that's what I'm saying, although a lot of what I'm going to cover is historical, it's very relevant to, actually, the period that we're going through today, and particularly with countering a lot of the arguments that we come across. Now, just to put it in its historical context, obviously, as Marxists, we seek a dialectical view of the world. You know, we want to see things in their wider context, not as isolated fragments, but actually with their interconnection with the whole. And I think in understanding Keynesianism in the post-war boom, it's also necessary to place it in its context. We don't just look at that post-war period, but you have to understand the development of capitalism both for and also to an extent after it as well. And I think you can go all the way back to the period of Marx and Engels. Even in the Communist Manifesto, they point out the enormous advances that capitalism had made and was making due to the factors of private ownership of the means of production. You had production for profit, but also to the fact of competition, which forced capitalists to reinvest their profits in production, and actually expand production. They were developing the productive forces. And they actually described Kaplan as creating wonders faster passing the Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals. And already by the period of sort of 1850 to 1870, you could see that capitalism had kind of fulfilled its basic historical role, or at least in Western Europe. You had the smashing of the old feudal orders. You had the abolition of particularism with the creation of unified nation states. You had the massive development of the productive forces as well, which really provided the material basis for socialism. Without large-scale industry, without a world market, we could not have the opportunity to actually have a class of society. But even by that stage, you could see capitalism had become a fetter on the development of the productive forces. And I think that is really why Marx and Engels made the mistake of thinking that the socialist revolution was imminent. But with the development of world trade, given capitalism new resources, new markets for its goods, capitalism was still able to expand, was still able to develop. And that's it proved itself to be what we call a relative fetter on production, non-absolute one. Meaning relative in the sense that a planned socialist economy, you would have seen far higher rates of development, a far more sort of even and harmonious development of the productive forces. Thus, from the period of around 1870 to 1914, you actually had a generalized upswing of capitalism. You had production of important commodities increasing in all the advanced capitalist countries.  You have the centralization of capital into a few gigantic international companies. You also had the development of globalization, which is nothing new at all. You see in these textbooks and academic things, this talk about it being a recent phenomenon. But it actually goes back all the way to this period. And it's really about the drive for more resources, more spheres of influence, but ultimately more markets. Meaning the capitalists had to expand their operations all over the world. And due to competition, if they didn't, if they stood still, then their competitors would beat them to it. And they would drive them out of business. There's a certain logic to this development. But by 1914, you saw a definitive change in the role of capitalism. The world was dominated by a few monopolies in each industry, and it was completely divided up by a handful of imperialist powers. And it's really the conditions that Lenin describes in his book, imperialism, the highest age of capitalism. And it was such that the world could only really be re-divided through a massive imperialist war. And that really shows it's clear proof that capitalism was no longer a progressive system. It was no longer able to actually develop the productive forces. The war very clearly showed that the very factors that had driven capitalism forward, private ownership of the means of production and the nation's state on the other, were now massive barriers to the further development of society. And thus, the war actually didn't appear to have capitalist decay afterwards. It had this period of what we call wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions. And you can see a whole period of the 20th century was dominated by this. And really, it was the failure of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries at the end of First World War to take power, which we've always got a stress was due to the leadership of the working class movements in those countries. It wasn't due to workers not being prepared or not wanting to change society. But it was this political failure, which really allowed capitalism to recover and keep plowing on. There's no final crisis of capitalism. But unlike before, production would increase, but also go back down again massively. It was a period of kind of sharp ups and downs, but a general period of decline. So growth was also extremely uneven across the world. So you did have high rates of growth in some areas. They talk of the roaring 20s and the USA in the 20s. But there was weak growth, or even decline, or stagnation in others, in places like Britain and Germany. But as is inevitable under capitalism, you saw a massive crisis develop in 1929, the like of which you've never really seen before in the whole of history.  And there was a huge collapse in the utilization of the productive potential. And it was in this period you saw massive unemployment. So in the century before 1914, unemployment in Britain averaged around 3% to 4%. Now, between 1939, it averaged 13%. But actually, in areas of the world, you saw unemployment rates of about 25% or thereabouts. And this leads, obviously, to an increasing questioning of the system. Workers can see idle factories, existing side by side with mass unemployment. And confidence in the system is increasingly lost. It's seen as a system that's unable to take society forward, unable to provide the goods. And it was in this context that John Maynard Keynes first wrote, well, firstly, the means to prosperity in 1933 and late in 1936, the general theory of employment, interest, and money. And one of his key concerns was how to get rid of this mass unemployment that came about during the crisis. Now, Keynes actually thought that the problem was one of demand, or more accurately, what he termed effective demand. So it's in demand from both consumption of workers and capitalists, but also demand of investment as well, from capitalists. And what was alluded to earlier in the day of really, he saw the problem as one of being under consumption. People weren't consuming enough. If only we could just increase the demand, then everything would be OK. And he thought that in a crisis, you ended up with this vicious cycle of unemployment, therefore low consumption from workers. You couldn't afford to buy goods on the market. Therefore, low investment from capitalists, because why invest in producing things when nobody can afford to buy them, and then the market for their goods fell away. And since there was limited effective demand from workers and capitalists, he argued that the state must step in in order to plug that gap, and therefore break out of this vicious cycle. He thought that the only way to do this would be for the state to intervene. And therefore, he thought that public spending on things like infrastructure or housing, but he even put forward the argument that even completely useless things. So things like you could pay workers to dig holes, and then pay other workers to fill them back in again. That's the kind of simplification of what he said, but it's essentially that kind of argument. All that's necessary is just to get money into people's pockets. It doesn't matter what they're doing. In that way, unemployment would be reduced, and then the whole system would kind of regather as momentum. But it's interesting to note that Keynes, he wasn't writing on the side of the unemployed or even the working class generally, but very much from the side of the bourgeoisie. And he was actually very open about that. He actually said, the class struggle will see me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie. And he was openly opposed to socialism, to Bolshevism, to the Russian Revolution. And he was actually a lifelong member of the Liberal Party, and was one of their key advisors. This was the classic party of British capitalism in the 19th and early 20th century. What he effectively wanted to do was to try and turn back the wheel of history to this kind of, away from this period of monopolies and the world dominated by finance, capital, and such, to kind of an imaginary period that he thought where you would have a period of responsible capitalism, where he thought you would have local business owners investing in their factories, investing in their communities, for the benefit of their communities as a whole. And I think you can clearly see he saw the destructive features of capitalism. And I think his consciousness was shaped by that turbulent period that he lived through, from the First World War onwards. And he knows what actually went through his mind. But I would posit that he was probably afraid of the revolutionary developments that you could see being likely to occur unless some solution could be found to the crisis. I think really, in a way, he wanted to save the system from itself. And it's therefore ironic to see his views being echoed today in the labor movement, but from the opposite side of the class struggle. But it's not at all surprising when you think of it, because really his theory is a way of trying to square the circle, if you will, trying to have a nice responsible capitalism, trying to essentially solve the problems of the working class, but without a struggle, without a revolution. But one of the main problems with Keynes is that he didn't actually explain why capitalism goes into a crisis in the first place. He only really tried to offer some kind of solution to getting out of the crisis. I'd say he had a very idealistic explanation for why capitalists don't invest. He suggested that it was due to this animal spirit of the capitalists, in effect business confidence. But it doesn't explain why confidence in the economy dries up in the first place. Is it just that some capitalists just wake up, they get out of bed one day and think, I'm not very confident about the economy now. Maybe I just shouldn't invest. Clearly, there are material reasons for that confidence drying up in the first place. And Marx actually explained this on a materialist basis about 60 years prior to Keynes, and argued that it was capitalism enters into crisis due to the fact that its production is privately owned. And it's therefore an inevitable feature of a system that produces only for profit. And this, as Marx explained, and as we've discussed earlier, profit doesn't just fall from the sky. Money doesn't just simply breed money, as the mercantilists thought it was the bankers think today. But it comes from the surplus labor of the working class. And therefore, part of the value that workers produce from their labor is obviously paid back to them in wages. But this tends to be restricted to the minimum necessary to keep them alive and reproduce them as a class at a certain standard of living. And obviously, that standard of living can be increased through class struggle. The standard that's considered the minimum today in Britain is different to what it was considered 100 years ago, or different to what it's considered to in China today. But the wages are only part of the value that's produced. The rest of that value, obviously, was what Marx termed surplus labor, surplus value. And that's appropriated by the capitalist in the form of profit, interest, and rent. So the working class, obviously, only receives a fraction of the value it produces. The problem then for the capitalist is that because their system is based on commodity production, it's produced as well on commodity exchange. They actually have to sell their commodities in order to realize this profit. But if workers are only paid a fraction of the total value that they produce, where is the demand going to come in order to buy back all these commodities? You could then really pose the question, not why does capitalism enter into crisis, but why isn't capitalism permanently in crisis? You would think from that way of seeing it, that it should always have this permanent contradiction. But Marx pointed to various ways that the capitalists overcome this. Firstly, if the working class in one country can't afford to buy back what they produce, then the capitalists export their goods and sell them in other markets around the world. And this is what you really saw with the British Empire in the 19th century. It's what you see today with China. The problem is it doesn't actually solve the problem at all. It just merely shifts it around the world. Not all countries can be net exporters. Some have to be net importers as well. Secondly, not all demand comes from the working class buying consumer goods. We touched on this in the first session, that if the capitalists, if they're not to be swallowed up by their competition, they're forced to reinvest a part of their profits into production, building more machines, more factories, more means of production. And it's what Marx referred to as department one goods, means of production, as opposed to department two goods, means of consumption. And there can be a certain balance between the two. The point that Adam made earlier is that this doesn't solve the contradiction. Since in order to profitably use department one goods, if you develop more means of production, you actually have to use them to produce more commodities or even more means of production. And therefore, it just sets up the problem on a higher and higher level. Thirdly, there's the use of credit. So you can give workers the ability to buy more today. But that comes with another problem, is that you expand the market artificially today about the expense of tomorrow. You have to pay back that credit with interest. There's also the problem that due to competition, due to the logic of the market, capitalists are forced to produce commodities as cheaply as possible to try and undercut their competition. And therefore, they're trying to do everything they can to make these commodities as cheap as possible, including cutting their workers' wages or replacing their workers with machines. Now, there's this dialectical contradiction there. And as what Adam explained earlier, what's rational for each capitalist on an individual basis is not rational for their class as a whole. And by cutting their own workers' wages, they're actually ultimately cutting away the very demand in the economy that they need in order to buy their goods in the first place. It's like they're sitting on a branch and soaring it away. They're cutting the ground beneath them. And it creates this vicious cycle that Keen's actually alluded to. But the key point is not a crisis of underconsumption, but it's a crisis of overproduction. There's a key distinction. It's that too many goods are produced, not for the needs of the market. But it's too many goods that can be absorbed by the narrow ability of the market to actually absorb them. And that comes because of the system of private ownership. Now, Keynesian policies were actually implemented in the USA with the New Deal and also in Britain as well, in the Great Depression. But the key point that we need to raise is that it wasn't actually Keynesian policies that ended the Great Depression. This only really came about when he started having the preparations for World War II and a shift to the war economy. He had a program of rearmament, which forced industry to reinvest. He also had conscription, which massively mopped up the huge unemployment that existed. But also after the war, you did see governments all over the world actually enacting Keynesian policies. And you had massive state spending, what's referred to as deficit financing. And you see both labor governments, Tory governments, and Britain enacting the same policies as what became to be known as the post-war consensus. And so this coincided with the biggest boom in capitalism's history, as I said before, nearly over a quarter of a century of nearly uninterrupted growth. And it's what's thought as the golden age of capitalism. And as I said before, you saw rising living standards, full employment, and therefore, illusions and reformism greatly strengthened. But we should always point out that the reforms weren't just simply handed down by the capitalist class as a gift. They were always one on the back of working class struggle. So particularly if you look in Britain, for example, the development of the welfare state was put in place by the 1945 Labour government after the war. But it was ultimately the capitalist were prepared to accept these huge concessions from above in order to try and stave off a revolution from below. And actually, this period just immediately after World War II, similarly to the end of World War I, we actually saw like a revolutionary wave sweep many areas of the world. And there were significant struggles in one country after another, for example, in Greece, in Italy, in France, in most of Eastern Europe, in China, for example. But actually, it was the actions of both the Stalinists and the social democrats in these countries, which led to the defeat of each of these movements. And all they're channeling into reformist currents, such as in Britain and the Labour government. And it was in this respect that Ted Grant actually pointed out that it was the political failure of the Stalinists and the social democrats to actually take power in Britain and Western Europe that created the political climate for a recovery of capitalism. We often refer to as the leaders of the working class movement, which act as one of the main props of capitalism. And without those leaders, capitalism wouldn't be able to last a few weeks. You very much see this in this period. And I'd actually recommend watching Ken Loach's documentary if you haven't seen it, the one called The Spirit of 45, to see what I really mean by this. Because although it's not the message of the film, I think the actual message is quite a reformist one. And it's actually very much the kind of thing that I needed to at the start, where it's just saying, oh, we just need to return to Keynesianism and everything would be great. But actually, there's a huge number of interviews and things with workers who lived through that period, recalling what it was actually like then. And what really comes across is the revolutionary potential that existed then. And how the working class, after the horrors of the war, were not prepared to go back to the conditions of the 30s, but were actually desperate for some kind of fundamental change, desperate for socialism. And actually, if the movement had been led by real revolutionaries in the Labour Party, they could have definitely seized that moment and gone all the way. But anyway, the situation generally, I'd say, puzzled the leaders of the Fourth International who were basing themselves on Trotsky's perspectives before the war, which was really that the war would end with a massive crisis of capitalism and socialist revolution. And some of these leaders of the Fourth International, even when it's hard to say that because there was no revolution, the war hadn't actually ended. It just shows a complete abandonment of the Marxist method and just being replaced by a very mechanical fetishization of just ready-made formula and ready-made perspectives. When this perspective was falsified by events, as it clearly was, many of its leaders ended up doing a complete 180-degree turn and really adapting themselves to Keynesianism and to reformist ideas. So you saw some, for example, Tony Cliff, who many of you might be familiar, he was the leader and main theoretician of what became the socialist workers party in Britain. He thought that capitalism has solved its contradictions through this idea of the permanent arms economy. And he tried to explain the post-war boom in terms of the high level of military spending on arms, particularly by the USA and Britain, on things like the Korean War, just the Cold War, generally, also the Vietnam War. And he thought that military expenditure had eliminated boom and bust. And therefore, the working class would revolt against capitalism not because of some kind of economic crisis or deep crisis, but simply due to alienation and the impacts of that. You had others such as Ernst Mandel, one of the other former leaders of the Fourth International. He actually completely abandoned the working class entirely in the advanced capitalist countries, and actually said that the French workers had become bourgeoisified. And he was even saying this, he said they wouldn't move, nothing was going to happen in France. He even was saying this in the beginning of 1968, the very year that the French workers did move, which was, at that point in history, the biggest general strike in the world, with 10 million workers coming out on strike. And it was actually only Ted Grant, who was really one of the only leaders of the Fourth International, who immediately after the war, against this perspective of imminent collapse and revolution, he actually had a very sober assessment and actually explained the real causes for the recovery and for the boom. But then after all the leaders had gone over to reformism and thought capitalism has solved its problems, he was one of the only ones really who actually explained that no, another world slump was an inevitability due to the very contradictions of the boom itself. And he actually published an article in 1960 called, Will There Be a Slump? He didn't just give one reason for the boom, but explained that it was a dialectical interaction between many different factors. So I'll run through the ones that he gives. As I mentioned earlier, there's a significant political factor of the betrayal of the Stalinists and the Social Democrats preparing the political ground for a recovery. Importantly, there's the destructive effects of the war, destroying massive means of production, stocks of consumer goods, whole neighborhoods, whole industrial areas. It's very similar to the effects of a crisis. If you look at Europe, huge amounts of the cities and the continent being completely destroyed, you only have to just explore this area to see that most of the houses or the buildings come from that period of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, because everything else was completely bombed out and destroyed. And if you look at, you can see some aerial footage of cities in Europe after the war.  And so obviously, that has the effects, similarly to a crisis, of destroying excess capacity. And it means that there's a need to then rebuild and reinvest in actually developing production back again. And actually, according to the UN, Ted points us out, the effects of this reconstruction on the boom actually only ended in 1958, or thereabouts, I think. There's also the Marshall Plan, which in today's money would be equivalent to about $130 billion US which was given or just simply or loaned or given to countries, particularly in Western Europe, in order to try and create a buffer against the USSR, but also cut across any kind of revolutionary developments by relaxing the need for austerity measures. These loans or grants were typically used to then buy back American goods, this kind of virtuous cycle, particularly for the USA. There was also enormously increased investment in industry, particularly the growth of new industries that arose during the war, things like plastics, aluminium, rocket technology, electronics, and atomic energy. There's also the massively increasing output of newer industries, so things like the chemicals industry, artificial fibres, synthetic rubber, plastics, light metals, electric household goods, washing machines, things like that, fridges, natural gas, electric energy, and all sorts of building activity. And it really benefited from this general development of science and technology during the war and after us as well, plus also new methods of industrial management, supply chain management, leading to a generalised increase in productivity. There's also a huge amount of fictitious capital created by military spending, which averaged about 10% of GDP in both Britain and the USA. It's an astronomical amount of spending. There was also the role of the colonial revolutions around the world in this period. And the independence of undeveloped countries giving rise to this new local bourgeoisie, which had an increased opportunity to actually develop their own industry in these countries. But also on the other side of that, you had, due to the boom in the advanced capitalist countries, an increasing demand for raw materials from the rest of the world, from the former colonial world. So you can see that the two things are interrelated. You also had the role of state intervention, so what we call Keynesian policies, in terms of the creation of welfare states, softening the impact of unemployment. But you also had the nationalisation of unproductive industries, things such as the steel industry, coal industry, transport, power. And really, you can see the capitalists in many countries are extremely happy for this to occur, because they, in effect, use state financing to take over industries that were completely devastated by the war, needed huge investment to bring them up to modern standards. But also then, by doing so, they were able to provide the rest of industry with cheap materials, cheap electricity. But then once these industries have been modernised, they often then privatise them again. So it's a classic case of nationalise the losses, privatise the profits. There's also a huge increase in world trade following the war. So you had the removal of protectionist barriers, which were often a precondition for receiving this martial aid that I talked about before. But there's also the role of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bretton Woods system, which actually forced countries to maintain a fixed exchange rate with the dollar, which really prevented competitive devaluations, and instead forced internal devaluations, cuts against wages, terms and conditions, things like this. Tied to this was the role of the USA, which emerged from the Second World War enormously strengthened. It was probably the only continent that wasn't significantly destroyed. And it had two-thirds of the world's gold was actually sitting in Fort Knox in 1945. So the dollar was literally as good as gold. And they also pushed for a monetarist policy within the IMF and within the Bretton Woods system. So all these factors interacted and fed back on each other, creating this kind of virtuous cycle of boom. But Ted pointed out that the main factor was really the enormous, early expanded scope for capital investment, which he points out as the main motor force for development under capitalism. And it's important to note that the reason why this was all made possible was not due to Keynesian policies either before or after the war, but it was due to the war itself. So as I said, on the one hand, the massive destruction of the war, eliminating the previous crisis of overproduction, requiring massive investment to rebuild. But on the other hand, you had this huge development of science, technique, new technologies for the needs of the war. So despite the enormous development of the productive forces in this period, it was only made possible by a system that demanded the deaths of tens of millions of people, destruction of whole continents. That's what was meant by this thing of creative destruction, hardly a progressive feature. But it's important to stress that when you hear reformists pointing out you had this huge deficit after the war, we still created the NHS. I said, yes, there was a huge deficit. I think it was about 250% of GDP in Britain. But the thing to stress is that it was an entirely different situation, a entirely different prospect to the situation that we have today. Back then, they were in conditions of worldwide boom, made possible by the effects of the war. Today, rather than a worldwide boom, we have a worldwide crisis with recessions or stagnations or sharp declines in development of world trade. There's no prospect of the USA come along in a massive program of martial aid. We're not facing years ahead of growth rates of six to 10% or more. So we have to point that out, because you hear this kind of thing all the time. But also in Ted's article, he also points out how the capitalist boom would inevitably end up in a slump. The boom itself contained the seas of its own destruction. And I think that's extremely relevant today, because he's fundamentally explaining why Keynesian policies are fundamentally flawed. The same policies are extremely popular with reformists within the labor movement. So looking at this in more detail, Keynesians ultimately think that state intervention in the economy can solve the problems of capitalism, which sounds great. But the major problem with this whole idea is that a state in an economy which is dominated by private ownership, a capitalist economy, the state doesn't actually have any money of its own. It has to either raise it through taxes, it has to borrow the money, or it has to simply print the money. But it doesn't actually just have its own source of income. Regarding taxes, these taxes have to come from somewhere. You can't prevent a crisis over the long term. Even if you tax the capitalist, and therefore you're eating into their profits, you generate a decline in the rate of profit, and of course, if things aren't sufficiently profitable, then the capitalist won't invest their money. They're only investing for a certain rate of profit. They will just take their money elsewhere. And that really highlights the limitations of the nation's state. But also, if you tax the working class, you're eating into the very demand that you're trying to stimulate. So you've taken with one hand, giving back from the other. As to the so-called deficit financing, we've got to point out that the state is spending money that it doesn't have. I.e., it's trying to generate money, but without putting back any kind of equivalent value into the economy to back up this money supply. It's the same thing with military spending. It's what we refer to as fictitious capital. It's production that's for destruction, not for exchange or investment. And therefore, money is being pumped into the economy on a huge scale with no actual real value to back it up. And it shows really this fallacy of the idea of the permanent arms economy of Cliff and others, which really, as I said before, is a capitulation to Keynesianism, and it doesn't solve the crisis. It actually leads to massive inflation, which is really the debasement of the currency. You end up with, in the long term, this will actually reduce demand unless workers struggle to try and obtain a corresponding wage increase. Because otherwise, you won't be able to actually afford as much as before, because the price of everything is increased. And unless your wage is increased with that, obviously you're much poorer. And that is precisely what did occur in one country after the other. In the late 60s and in the 1970s, the rate of inflation actually went up to around 30% in many countries, including in Britain. And there was a huge wave of class struggle. As workers tried to just keep their wages in pace with this huge inflation. And it really shows the limits of trying to have the state regulate the economy for the benefit of the capitalist class as a whole. If you only nationalize 20% of the economy or so, as was the case in Britain, it's still the other 80% that's privately owned, which is going to be decisive. And ultimately, it's the market that it takes to the state. And particularly when you consider the economy isn't just one national thing, but we're part of an international world market. You can see this today with the steel crisis. But despite the problem of deficit financing of nationalized industries, ultimately the demand in these industries for things like steel and coal electricity has been determined by the needs of the other 80% of the market. And so when the private industry goes into crisis, so too will the nationalized industries. Furthermore, both Keynesian investment, like public investment, but also private investment in productive industries, actually creates the problem that I needed to do before, which is that if you create more means of production, then you actually have to find a market for those goods. You have to have, you know, it tends towards the situation of overproduction, and it just builds it up onto a higher and higher scale. This situation was well exacerbated by the fact that although living standards actually increased during this period, real wages went up, the actual share of GDP that went to workers as opposed to the capitalists and bankers actually declined over this period. Most of the gains went to the ruling class and obviously not to the workers. Again, this exacerbates overproduction. There's an increasing gulf between what can be absorbed in the market and what can. Thus the boom itself prepared the ground for the crisis of the 1970s. It's interesting to note that as world trade increased, it created this world market, but also it creates a worldwide crisis when that crisis does eventually break out. Now, you saw the spark for the crisis in the 1970s really being the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, but that in itself was really a result of the contradictions of the previous period reaching the surface. In particular, you had things like huge spending on the Vietnam War by the USA. You had an enormous trade deficit with other countries. This put unbearable pressure on the dollar. And therefore in 1971, the USA had to abandon the convertibility of dollars to gold, and they floated the dollar, which really began the collapse of that whole system, the Bretton Woods system. And this was exacerbated by the oil crisis in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This caused the OPEC then led an oil embargo, led to prices massively shooting up, led to huge deficits, huge defaults on payments, and it sparked this worldwide crisis that you saw in the 70s. But these things were really kind of accidents that expressed the inner necessity. In the same way that the bursting of the subprime mortgage crisis in the USA was really just the tipping point of a generalized crisis of overproduction that had been built up over decades previously. You ended up with this situation of what's called stagflation, so low growth, high unemployment, but also alongside high inflation, which according to Keynesians isn't supposed to be possible. According to Keynesians, high inflation was supposed to reflect high demand for goods, and also therefore high demand for labor, but you shouldn't have unemployment going along with this. Therefore, in this period in the 1970s, the ruling class really abandoned Keynesianism, abandoned policies of debt financing, abandoned printing money to just pay for these kind of things. Quite simply, it just didn't work and led to the situation of massive crisis, led to huge inflation, and huge class struggle. And that's why you saw this shift away to monetarist policy, and what is also termed by many as neoliberalism, which I would argue isn't just some kind of just evil ideology that just dropped from the sky, it's not just some kind of nasty policy. It's really just the policies that was necessary by the capitalist class for them to restore profitability. So it includes things like massive attacks on the working class, massive attacks on trade unions, privatizing public industries, reducing state expenditure, including welfare payments, all these kind of things, and therefore reducing taxes, therefore re-increasing the rate of profit. Therefore, it's interesting that for these neolibals, they say that the states should play no role, but actually to achieve these kind of things, these kind of policies, actually requires a very strong state in the form of the police, the army, prisons, and so forth, because it requires huge battles with the working class. But anyway, just to sum up really, the main points I want to emphasize is really just that the conditions for the post-war boom were pretty unique. They rose out of the devastation of the war itself and the technical advances that went with it. We're not likely to see a repeat of these conditions. Third World War was pretty much ruled out due to nuclear weapons, due to the class balance of forces, that also, despite the huge illusions of Keynesianism, no amount of deficit financing could actually avert a crisis of capitalism. In fact, it actually made the crisis of the 1970s much more severe than it had it been otherwise. But despite this, these illusions are still very strong today, and many think that the answer to our current situation is a return to Keynesianism. I said that's really the essence of Corbynomics, maybe a point that someone wants to develop more in the discussion. But you can actually see before our very eyes the results of the biggest Keynesian program in history, which is that of China since 2009. But despite enormous investment in infrastructure, housing, more means of production, they're now facing this monumental crisis of overproduction, which is about to burst before our eyes. It just really shows that it's impossible to just tinker around with the edges of capitalism. You can't just create some kind of responsible capitalism that works well for everybody. But what is necessary is to understand the laws of the economy so that we're not subjected to them as blind forces. But in order for that to actually be possible, we actually have to have real control over the economy. We have to be able to plan it rather than us being controlled by the invisible hand of the market. But once we actually have that control, we will be able to do things like eliminate poverty, eliminate hunger, eliminate homelessness. All these kind of things will actually be able to provide a world of plenty for everybody. And that's our task ahead.