FREE with Clara Mattei

Clara Mattei
  • 5.0 (22)
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The FREE podcast is hosted by economist Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order & Escape from Capitalism; and Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa. FREE stands for the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum

  1. $50 Trillion Moved From the Working Class to the 1% | Ben Johnson, Inequality by Design

    7h ago

    $50 Trillion Moved From the Working Class to the 1% | Ben Johnson, Inequality by Design

    $50 trillion has moved from the working class to the top 1% of Americans over the past four decades. Clara Mattei talks with Ben Johnson, co-author of Inequality by Design, about how the rules were written to make that happen.Drawing on four decades of public data, Ben Johnson and economist Dr. Ryan Mattson trace the widening gap between what the economy produces and what working people take home. A federal minimum wage frozen at $7.25 since 2009. A purchasing-power gap between minimum and average wages that has grown past $22 an hour. GDP figures that climb year after year, with the gains collecting at the very top. According to a RAND Corporation study, about $3,700 a year has left the pocket of every American below the top 1%, every year, for forty years. The book grounds these numbers in the lives of real people, then follows the policy choices that built the gap.The conversation widens to the long view. Johnson compares today's inequality to Bourbon France in the years before its revolution and to Tsarist Russia in its final decade, reading the historical record of where extreme concentration of wealth has led before. They look at worker-owned alternatives like Mondragón, the Spanish cooperative that employs tens of thousands and shares its profits, and they close on whether new technology and AI spread opportunity widely or gather it into even fewer hands.Ben Johnson holds undergraduate degrees in Russian and international relations and spent years as an emergency medical technician, which put him face to face with the families behind the statistics. He is now a member of the FREE Assembly. Inequality by Design: How a Rigged Economy Fractures America and What We Can Do About It is available now from Upriver Press. https://www.upriverpress.com/home/inequality-by-designAs of June 2026, Ben Johnson is running for Tulsa City Council District 9.CHAPTERS00:00:00 3,000 Billionaires and Counting00:01:22 Inequality by Design00:02:11 Why the Book Starts With People00:04:08 Why Your Paycheck Buys Less00:06:14 What the GDP Numbers Hide00:09:26 Where $50 Trillion Went00:11:19 How the Money Leaves Your Town00:12:24 Where Profit Really Comes From00:14:19 Who Sets Your Wage00:15:27 When Workers Own the Company00:16:57 Oklahoma Minimum Wage at $7.25 Since 200900:18:44 Why Investors Buy Land They Never Use00:23:58 America and France Before the Revolution00:28:21 When Money Loses Its Value00:30:40 Have America's Flour Wars Begun?00:31:53 The Revolution's Unfinished Promise00:33:47 Why Revolutions Split and Fail00:35:37 The Third Way That Keeps Getting Crushed00:40:10 What We Can Do About It00:42:40 Will Technology Save Us?00:46:07 Cancer Cures or Another Yacht?00:47:09 Beyond "Profit Line Go Up"🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate🎧 Listen as a PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-with-clara-mattei/id1828302105Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m5xbrPzTSmdGZFQuZP7ZC▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#Inequality #Economics #Capitalism #Meritocracy #minimumwage

    48 min
  2. The Alternative to Capitalism Nobody Talks About | Eleanor Finley & Camila Vergara

    Jun 3

    The Alternative to Capitalism Nobody Talks About | Eleanor Finley & Camila Vergara

    War, austerity, and a political class that offers no way out. What does an actual alternative look like — one that's already being built?Dr. Camila Vergara sits down with Eleanor Finley, author of Practicing Social Ecology (Pluto Press), to trace how democratic, ecological alternatives to capitalism move from theory into practice — from the commons of New England to the municipalities of Burlington, Vermont, to the feminist communes of Rojava in northern Syria.Drawing on Murray Bookchin's intellectual legacy — rooted in Marx, anarchism, indigenous philosophy, and Hannah Arendt — this conversation maps what it takes to build real political power from the ground up: cooperative production, direct democracy assemblies, libertarian municipalism, and the internal transformation required to sustain a movement.In this episode:• What social ecology is and where it comes from• The Burlington Greens, Bernie Sanders, and the limits of electoral politics• How the Rojava revolution built democratic confederalism under siege• Why women's liberation is central to any serious socialist project• The "revolutionary personality" — patience, hope as discipline, conflict resolution• What activists in the US can learn from movements abroadEleanor Finley is a political ecologist and activist. Practicing Social Ecology is out now from Pluto Press.📚 Practicing Social Ecology (Pluto Press): https://www.plutobooks.com/product/practicing-social-ecology/📚 Systemic Corruption (Princeton University Press) https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691207537/systemic-corruption🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum00:00:00 Introduction00:00:39 What Is Social Ecology?00:05:28 Murray Bookchin: Origins and Intellectual Roots00:11:26 Theory Into Practice: Social Ecology as Praxis00:12:24 Agroecology and the Back-to-the-Land Movement00:17:57 Beyond the Garden: The Political Sphere00:19:14 Libertarian Municipalism Explained00:22:35 The Burlington Greens and the Limits of Electoral Politics00:26:33 Rojava: How the Revolution Began00:27:57 Democratic Confederalism: Building Counter-Power00:33:32 Women at the Center of Revolution00:35:51 Production for Need, Not Profit00:37:22 Changing Ourselves to Change the World00:38:22 The Revolutionary Personality00:39:22 Hope as a Political Commitment00:40:54 Responsibility, Conflict Resolution, and the Left00:45:16 Closing Reflections#SocialEcology #DirectDemocracy #Rojava #MurrayBookchin #EleanorFinley #CamilaVergara #PoliticalEconomy #DemocraticConfederalism #FreeFreeForum

    47 min
  3. What the American Left Got Wrong | An Indigenous Elder's Diagnosis

    May 27

    What the American Left Got Wrong | An Indigenous Elder's Diagnosis

    Why does the American left keep losing? Roberto Mendoza — 82 years old, six decades of organizing from Alcatraz in 1969 to Standing Rock in 2016 — sits down with economist Clara Mattei to name what he thinks went wrong, and why it keeps going wrong.His answer isn't strategy or messaging. It's values. And Marxism, he argues, still shares too many of them with capitalism.Materialism. Industrialization. Top-down hierarchy. Roberto walks Clara through the three places where the supposed alternative to capitalism ended up reproducing it — why the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of those contradictions, and why China today is better understood as state capitalism than communism.Then he offers the alternative he's spent decades building: a side-by-side reading of indigenous values against capitalist ones — generosity vs. hoarding, reciprocity vs. extraction, commons vs. private property, direct democracy vs. top-down rule — and points to the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in northern Syria as places where those values are being built into actual institutions.A conversation about what the American left got wrong, what indigenous political thought has always known, and what it would take to build something that doesn't collapse back into what it claimed to oppose.In this conversation:- Why patriarchy was the main weakness of the 1960s and 70s left — including inside the Black Panther Party- How materialism became the shared value between Cold War rivals- Why Soviet planning reproduced capitalist hierarchy- China as state capitalism, not communism- The full indigenous-vs-capitalist values framework- The Zapatistas, Rojava, and Murray Bookchin's communalism- Why small, decentralized, and democratically-controlled beats large and efficient- Standing Rock, Wounded Knee, and the changing strategy of indigenous resistance- Why happiness lives in relationships, not material accumulation🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#claramattei #robertomendoza #marxism #indigenouswisdom #politicaleconomy #zapatistas #rojava #freepodcast #leftpolitics

    30 min
  4. Why the Dollar Gets Stronger as the Bombs Fall | Iran War, Oil Prices, and the New Imperialism

    Apr 1

    Why the Dollar Gets Stronger as the Bombs Fall | Iran War, Oil Prices, and the New Imperialism

    Oil just crossed $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Gas prices are surging. And the dollar? It's getting stronger — not weaker. That's not a paradox. It's by design.In this episode of the FREE Podcast, economist Clara Mattei sits down with Costas Lapavitsas (Professor of Economics, SOAS University of London) to explain what no mainstream outlet will: the Iran war isn't a disruption to the global economic system — it's a product of it. From the dollar's imperial grip to the hollowing out of US industry to the $2 billion a day being spent on bombs instead of schools, this conversation maps the economic machinery driving the current crisis.Costas brings a new theory of imperialism rooted in Marxian political economy — connecting the financialization of the last four decades, the rise of China, the structural decline of the US as a productive power, and the escalation of militarism that follows when a declining hegemon refuses to let go.In this conversation:• Why the dollar strengthens during war — and who pays for it• Oil at $100+: what breaks next in the global economy• The US spends $2 billion a day on this war — enough to fund free college or universal childcare• How US multinationals hollowed out the domestic economy they claim to defend• Trump as symptom, not author — why this crisis predates and outlasts him• Capitalism and militarism: why markets produce war, not peace• The military-industrial complex: corrupt, inefficient, and structurally incapable of rebuilding US productive power• The WWI analogy: why this moment has no natural point of equilibrium• Why Costas sees hope in American workers and youthGUEST:Costas Lapavitsas is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London, and a scholar of contemporary capitalism and imperialism. His latest book is The State of Capitalism (2023). Recent articles include "A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism" (New Left Review) and "Trump's Chaotic Imperialism" (forthcoming, Socialist Register).Watch Ad-FREE: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate🎧 Listen as a PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-with-clara-mattei/id1828302105Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m5xbrPzTSmdGZFQuZP7ZC▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#IranWar #OilPrices #DollarImperialism #Imperialism #StraitOfHormuz #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #ClaraMattei #CostasLapavitsas #PoliticalEconomy #AntiCapitalism #FREEPodcast #EconomicCrisis #USHegemony #GasPrice

    1h 21m
  5. Why Economics Can't Explain Poverty — It Was Designed Not To | Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven

    Mar 31

    Why Economics Can't Explain Poverty — It Was Designed Not To | Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven

    Oxfam reports the super rich in the Global North extracted over $30 million per hour from the Global South in 2024. So why does mainstream economics keep telling these countries they just need better institutions?Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven (Senior Lecturer in International Development, King's College London; co-author of Decolonizing Economics) explains how the economics discipline systematically erases colonialism, imperialism, and uneven development from its models — and what that erasure costs the majority of people on the planet.In this episode of the FREE Podcast (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation), Clara Mattei and Ingrid break down:• How Eurocentrism operates as a structural bias inside economic theory• Why Nobel Prize-winning frameworks like Acemoglu and Robinson still blame the Global South for its own poverty• How "institutional reform" functions as a cover for extraction• The case of Ghana's Ashanti Goldfields: 125+ years of colonialism, financialization, dispossession, and forced mergers• How the IMF, World Bank, and structural adjustment deepen underdevelopment• • International financial subordination: why Global South countries pay more to borrow, hold dollars they don't control, and lose domestic firms to multinational competition• Why development economics narrows the lens to individual behavior instead of confronting the global system• The Nobel Prize in Economics as a political instrument• What decolonizing economics actually requires — and why it's a political project, not an academic exerciseGuest links:📚 Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction — https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=decolonizing-economics-an-introduction--9781509545476📄 Cracks in the Gold Standard (new article on mining & development in Ghana) — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X25000919🌐 Ingrid's website: https://ingridhk.com/📝 Developing Economics blog: https://developingeconomics.org/🤝 Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ): https://d-econ.org/Subscribe for future episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@FreeFreeForumLearn more: https://freefreeforum.orgSupport FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate#decolonizingeconomics #globalsouth #capitalism #imperialism #developmenteconomics #Ghana #NobelPrize #IMF #WorldBank #structuraladjustment #freepodcast #ClaraMattei #economics #unevendevelopment🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate🎧 Listen as a PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-with-clara-mattei/id1828302105Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m5xbrPzTSmdGZFQuZP7ZC▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum

    51 min
  6. Why the Wealth Tax Debate Misses the Real Problem | Bob Lord, Patriotic Millionaires

    Mar 18

    Why the Wealth Tax Debate Misses the Real Problem | Bob Lord, Patriotic Millionaires

    Economist Clara Mattei and tax attorney Bob Lord expose how the US tax code was engineered to build the billionaire oligarchy — and why wealth taxes alone won't fix it.Bob Lord, senior vice president for tax policy at the Patriotic Millionaires and 35-year tax attorney, joins Clara Mattei to break down the mechanics of wealth inequality hiding inside the US tax code — from capital gains and unrealized income to regressive taxation, Social Security caps, and how billionaires legally avoid taxes for decades.The top 0.00001% of Americans — just 19 people — made nearly $1 trillion per year for the past two years. That's not just asset values rising. It's a tax system designed to let billionaire wealth compound tax-free while workers get taxed every two weeks.In this episode of FREE, Bob Lord explains:• How capital gains and unrealized wealth allow billionaires to avoid income tax indefinitely• Why Jeff Bezos paid ~2.4% effective tax rate while his Amazon stock grew 50%+ per year for 32 years• How regressive taxation — Social Security caps, sales taxes, property taxes, fines — extracts wealth from workers while protecting the top• Why eliminating state income and property taxes is the next phase of the wealth transfer• The difference between a wealth tax and fixing the real structural problem• What local organizing and ballot initiatives have accomplished — and what's possible in Tulsa and beyondBob Lord is senior vice president for tax policy at the Patriotic Millionaires and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Find out more:  @PatrioticMillionaires  FREE is hosted by Clara Mattei, economist and author of The Capital Order, as seen on Channel 4, Breaking Points, and more.#ClaraMattei #WealthInequality #BillionaireTax #CapitalGains #TaxTheRich #Oligarchy #RegressiveTax #WealthTax #PatrioticMillionaires #BobLord #UnrealizedGains #freepodcast 🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donateOur Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:01:30 - Guest Introduction and Discussion on Tax System 00:05:40 - The Flaw of the U.S. Tax System 00:06:48 - Disproportionate Taxation and Class Differences 00:10:39 - The Role of Tax System in Wealth Inequality 00:14:24 - Understanding Regressive Taxation 00:16:53 - Impact of Regressive Taxation on Consumption 00:22:02 - State Income Tax and the Impact on Middle Class 00:27:55 - The Case of Jeff Bezos: Understanding Effective Annual Rate of Income Tax 00:31:33 - Rationality of Regressive Taxation and its Impact 00:37:02 - Exploring Corporate Taxes, Inheritance Taxation and Offshoring 00:49:36 - Mobilizing the Population for Progressive Taxation

    58 min
  7. Sudan War Profits: UAE Gold, US Weapons

    Mar 17

    Sudan War Profits: UAE Gold, US Weapons

    Sudan’s war is being framed as “tribal conflict,” while a profit system extracts gold and moves US weapons through regional pipelines.Human rights lawyer Suad Abdel Aziz (Executive Director, Decolonizing Sudan) explains who benefits, how it works, and what people in the US can do now.In this episode:• UAE gold extraction, smuggling networks, and conflict, resource supply chains• US weapons exports to the UAE and how they reach the RSF (Rapid Support Forces)• Red Sea ports, proxy warfare, and the geopolitical stakes• How sanctions and economic pressure helped set the stage• Practical next steps: UAE arms embargo pressure + boycott toolsGet involved:• Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum• Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org• Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donateResources mentioned:• Decolonizing Sudan : https://decolonizesudan.org/• Boycott & Disrupt Toolkit: https://decolonizesudan.org/boycottuae• Support: https://givebutter.com/DecolonizesudanChapters:00:00 The “simple move” that could end this fast00:23 Sudan’s hidden catastrophe + the media frame01:19 Meet Suad Abdel Aziz (Decolonizing Sudan)02:18 Who profits, and why it’s covered up02:41 UAE gold: stolen resources + extraction04:37 US weapons manufacturers + the pipeline06:21 Boycott toolkit + No Thanks app07:28 Sudan–Palestine links + war economy logic08:14 Red Sea ports + regional proxy strategy10:13 Abraham Accords + foreign policy control11:41 Diaspora dilemma: reform vs intervention13:53 RSF, mercenaries, accountability + command chain19:00 UAE’s proxy-militia playbook beyond Sudan20:13 Uprising roots, sanctions strategy, RSF crackdown25:19 What people in the US can do now (arms embargo + pressure)27:53 Closing: reframe Sudan + solidarity▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#Sudan #UAE #WarProfits

    29 min
  8. The AI Data Center Gold Rush: The Bailout State Behind It

    Feb 25

    The AI Data Center Gold Rush: The Bailout State Behind It

    AI data centers are swallowing trillions, and many are calling it an AI bubble. This episode asks a sharper question: who absorbs the risk, and who pays when the bet breaks?We follow the engine underneath the hype, the state, the Federal Reserve, tech monopolies, and finance, working together to turn a risky AI bet into protected wins, while shifting the costs onto workers, retirees, communities, and the climate.In this conversation, Clara Mattei is joined by Irai Regmi (writer of Radical Transitions; former researcher at the Roosevelt Institute) to map the machinery behind the boom:• What AI data centers actually are and why they’re treated like a new “asset class”• Why state “intervention” isn’t a rescue. It’s the foundation of accumulation• How the Federal Reserve anchors the financial architecture powering the bailout• How “financial stability” language legitimizes protection for the biggest players• Where the costs hit daily life: layoffs, higher electricity bills, water + grid strain, local damage• The hidden gamble: pensions, retirement security, and the austerity cycle that follows bailouts• AI infrastructure, militarism, and the global alliances forming around profit + power• A vital detour to Nepal: what a youth-led uprising reveals about systemic corruption, state violence, and radicalizationAre AI data centers popping up in your area? Where are you seeing the costs show up first? Power bills, water, layoffs, public budgets, or something else?Get involved:• Irai Regmi’s writing Radical Transitions: https://radicaltransitions.substack.com/• Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum• Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org• Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate🎧 Listen as a PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-with-clara-mattei/id1828302105Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m5xbrPzTSmdGZFQuZP7ZC▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#AIBubble #DataCenters #FederalReserve

    1h 4m
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5
out of 5
22 Ratings

About

The FREE podcast is hosted by economist Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order & Escape from Capitalism; and Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa. FREE stands for the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum

Information

  • Creator
    Clara Mattei
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Clara Mattei
  • Show Website
    FREE with Clara Mattei

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