Behind the Bastards - A Book Episode (with Rush Limbaugh)

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Robert is reunited with Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston for a book episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new

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you get your podcasts. Oh man, it's behind the bastards. A podcast about the worst people in all of history that sometimes, boy, there's a lot of books that I have to read for this podcast, and that that is exhausting. So every now and then, we like to do a little bitty episode that is easier because I don't have to read a book. I just have to read a book. But in this case, I get to read it live to my friends, Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston. Even more news multiverse, which is a lot like the Marvel multiverse and that Chris Evans is heavily involved in both. Yeah, it's the same. They're part of the same universe. Part of the same universe. That's right. Cody, you are famously playing She-Hulk in a new series

of movies. And Katie, a lot of people don't know this, Iron Man's stunt double in all of the original Iron Man movies for the last 20 years. That's right. Hey, sorry that dried up for you. Yeah, it does. It is a shame that there's no more Iron Man roles. But I have a feeling we're all going to do fine in this new career we have in which we're going to be reading a very special book by Rush Limbaugh titled Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims. Wait, so wait a second. Wait, fuck you, man. Hold on. Yeah, you when you show me this book, I didn't realize he wrote it. Oh, I mean, I thought it was just like a bizarre like fan fiction that you know, I'm like, no, look at this. Look at this cover. I want you to look at this fucking cover. Stare into it.

Looks like a romance novel kind of. Between this person and their horse. Yeah, it's you've got like a big headed caricature drawing of Rush Limbaugh in Colonial Garb and his horse. And I know because I've read a couple reviews of this, that's his sidekick. He's a talking horse boy. The plot of these stories, as far as I have learned from reviews, I haven't read the book yet, but I've read some reviews is that Rush Revere is like a is like a history teacher at a public school. And he goes back in time to teach kids the history of the United States of America. This isn't fucking amazing. Yeah, I mean, these are number one New York Times bestselling books. And one of the things there's a lot you liar. You want to lie like what I hate about them is that

they're they're really quality printing jobs. Like people talked about that in the reviews, but like, no, like, look at this, look at it like beautiful illustrations. Oh, yeah, photos like these are this. It's a really well put together book. Well, he hired love a book. It feels nice, but feeling book like I hate all of the resources that clearly went into making this very well put together book on an aesthetic level. And then look at this fucking back cover. Like it's like Rush Limbaugh, an actual picture of him like standing and smiling. I mean, we need to also clarify jacket. He looks like he's wearing he's wearing a fucking leather. He looks like the substitute teacher who like comes in in a leather jacket with a helmet and like tells you he's rid

of motorcycle to work. But then like later in the day, one of the kids makes fun of his name, and he just like slaps the kid. And then you have to have like a meeting with the principal about how he's not going to be allowed to be a substitute teacher. To borrow a phrase from Cody, it's very weekend dad. It's very weekend dad. And then I think the thing that we have failed to to describe for our listeners is that the cover, the Paul Revere in the horse, it is Rush Limbaugh's face on Paul Revere's body, if I'm not mistaken, right? Oh, it certainly is. Yes, there's no doubting that. That cherub like face with a jaunty pilgrim hat and talking horse, apparently. New York Times bestseller, eh? So I got this in the mail. I did not purchase this

book. I got this in the mail with this card, which is covered in a bunch of obscure runes and a drawing of Cthulhu. And inside the card, I'm going to read this. It's from Kimberly and Thor. Thor. My husband and I are huge fans of the show. We have learned so much and also died inside from how shitty humanity can be. We were at a thrift store recently and saw this book amongst the hardback copies of individual books and knew it was perfect for you and the gang. And then she says the author's note had me in stitches. So I feel like we have to start with that author's note. And first off, Kimberly and Thor, I want to thank you. I'm so thoughtful. We haven't even read the key. You haven't even read the book yet. I know you nailed it with the hammer of Thor.

I might instead say of saying thank you, say for thank you. Like a mix of fuck you and thank you. For thank you. For thank you. Yeah. Interestingly, so this is in the brave pilgrims. Okay. So we've got it starts off. I've got a drawing of the Mayflower that as far as I can tell is is pretty pretty and a pretty accurate drawing like a little notes. That seems fine. A note from the author. We live in the greatest country on earth, the United States of America. But what makes it so great? Why do some call the United States a miracle? How did we become such a tremendous country in such a short period of time? I'm going to answer that for you, Russian. The answer is genocide. Several genocides, one of which was an enslaving genocide. Yeah. So that's good. But he

does not. He says, instead of after that saying genocide, he says, after all, the United States is less than 250 years old. I want to try and help you understand what American exceptionalism and greatness is all about. It does not mean that we Americans are better than anyone else. It does not mean that we're saying we're better than everyone else. That is literally what we says because he's like, it doesn't mean that there's anything different to us as human beings or that we've never faced problems. American exceptionalism and greatness means that America is special because it is different from all other countries. It's different. You're not saying the say it's not special because we're inherently better. We're just different in a way that's

exceptional. And that's not saying that we're better. We're just exceptionally different. We're exceptionally, it's like a special difference that is like above everybody. So we're not better. We're just more exceptional. The Roman Empire practiced chattel slavery on a massive scale and the Mongolians carried out a series of horrific genocides in order to colonize large areas of land. But those are different than what the United States did because the people spoke different languages. Oh, see, they were speaking like Latin and whatever. Get that out of here. No, no, no. We did that stuff while speaking English, which means it's fine. It's okay. It's good that we did it. So much more. That's what makes us special is that we spoke

English. The words, the words that we use, the words that we use, the same meanings of the words, more or less. But yeah, absolutely the same meanings, but different words, different. Yeah, different sounds. That's all that matters. Yeah. So I'm going to continue with rush here. It is a land built on true freedom and individual liberty and it defends both around the world. So there's another I have notes on this one as well. I might refer people to our episodes on the CIA or on Henry Kissinger and all of the different times that the United States. But Rush was a big fan of all of the democracies we overthrew because they were they were generally left wing. I don't know. This is what's what's kind of one of the things I read when I was prepping for this was a Chicago

Tribune review of this book, which I might pull up for a second. But basically, the author was like, yeah, Rush Limbaugh is like a right wing ideologue, but the book's actually fine. It doesn't have, much that's objectionable in the history is okay. And it's like a pretty good children's book. And like as soon as reading it, what I think is dangerous about this is that Rush is obviously doing this to groom children, right? Like that's the reason you write a book like this is to like groom children. But I thought the left was full of groomers. Well, we could talk about the age of women that Rush Limbaugh tend to do abroad. But he's attempting to like inculcate kids with his ideas. And he's doing it, I think, pretty intelligently. And the fact that a guy who I

think is probably more or less disinterest at the Chicago Tribune could read this and be like, well, this isn't very political, is evidence of how politicized to the right our history education is. Because like one of the things that guy, I have to bring up the Chicago Tribune article, because there's a quote from it that is I think like emblematic of kind of the some of the things that most Americans just tend to kind of like accept as read and that I found kind of like unsettling. Here's the exact line. Rush's political viewpoint certainly shows up, but less than you might expect. He even defines American exceptionalism in a matter unlikely to offend Rachel Maddow, which I guess you might be right because she might not be offended. But also she just she

just made a statement about how she likes hanging out with Tucker Carlson. Yeah. Again, there's a lot to say about I missed that. Yeah, she loves running into him. He's they're all nice people to each other. People to each other. Exactly. Yeah. Which is for all of his flaws. One of the things I like about I'll always like about John Stuart is he does not pretend to like people like Tucker Carlson. Yeah, why would you? Yeah, but but anyway, I know why they would why they because it's good for money because they're all basically whatever whatever as as the anyway. The role of the United States is to encourage individuals to be the best that they can be to try to improve their lives to reach their goals and make their dreams come true. In most

parts of the world dreams never become more than dreams. In the United States, they become true every day. There are so I had a friend with a dream of dying. Well, it was a nightmare, but it was a nightmare of dying from lack of affordable insulin. And then they did. That's a dream, a nightmare that came true. That could think Cody, that couldn't have happened. Do you think that would have happened in Denmark? Do you think people are dying from lack of insulin in Denmark? Absolutely. That is a dream that will not come true in Denmark. Those are those are specifically American dreams right there. American dream, baby. That is the exceptional American dream. Katie, I know you like poetry. You must have read a dream deferred by Langston Hughes,

which is a poet about how dreams only come true in America. Yeah, if I'm remembering it properly. Yeah, that's that's exactly right, Robert. That's that's what Langston was getting on about. We are a page into this book. We are even past the forward. No, this is a note from the author. Forward is kind of gauche. I hope that I hope it talks about like his titles like I was thinking about like Limbaul Revere, Paul Rush here. Honestly, a lot of options. I would completely change my opinion on this book if he'd had the courage to call his character Limbaul Revere. If he had the limbaul to do that. If he had the limbauls, yes. Wow, that was a lot of hits right in the row there. All right, I'm going to continue.

The sad reality is that since the beginning of time, most citizens of the world have not been free. I wonder where they weren't free. Are you going to elaborate on the ways in which people weren't free in your book? No, I don't think they're going to, Katie. For hundreds and thousands of years, many people in other civilizations and countries were servants to their Kings, leaders and governments. Now, I guess it's true that the first four of the five first presidents being slaveholders means they didn't have servants. They had slaves and he does not, he does not list slaves on here. So maybe that's what he's making. I would love to do like a search find like, yeah, upload this to like a PDF and then I'm sure there's a Kindle version,

but I'm not going to pay for it. Why? We're reading this again. I have to say as an author, a very well printed book. I hate how high quality the printing of this book is. Well, because it's like also like, are the pages aged or is that just like what it looks like? No, no, no. That's just what it looks like. They did a pretty nice for like a kid's book. What year was this published? It's very recent because I can, as a conservative like kid, when I was like nine or 10, I can imagine having, getting this book from a family member or something and like 2013, 2014. Okay. Because there's two books in this and this, this is a collection. It's an anthology of the first two Rush Revere novels. Oh, oh, how nice for him. Yeah.

So we're, we're talking about the people who for thousands of years were sir. If you look up the adventures of Rush Revere, the category is adventure series. Gathered children. I love this idea of like, oh, I need a new adventure novel. By Rush Limbaugh. I mean, there's like, there's like, he got through like seven of these before we finally look at it now. He's got a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about the people who for thousands of years were servants to their King's leaders in government. It didn't matter how hard these people worked to improve their lives because their lives were not their own. Imagine that. What a horror. They often feared for their lives and could not get out from under a ruling class no

matter how hard they tried. I can't with this guy. Yes. This is inconceivable to an American living in bondage to a ruling class that responds with violence at any time you try to get out from under them. Something we can't comprehend here. It's an unfathomable situation. Is this still the author's note? Yes, this is still the author's note. We're barely making it sentence by sentence. Many of these people lived and continue to live in extreme poverty with no clean water, limited food and none of the luxuries that we often take for granted. Many citizens in the world were punished sometimes severely for having their own ideas, beliefs and hopes for a better future. The United States of America is unique because it is the exception to all this.

Shut the fuck up. Our country is the first country ever to be founded on the principle that all human beings are created as free people. The founders of this phenomenal country believed that all people were born to be free as individuals. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just circling back to what you've already mentioned. This article, a pretty accurate description. The author's note is completely false. It's all lies. It's an adventure tale. But what he's doing successfully here is he is reframing his specific line of right-wing bullshit, which most centrists dislike. Rush Limbaugh is not a guy who had a big listenership of centrists. He's reframing it in a way that is very familiar to anyone who had an

American grade school education, and thus is pretty inoffensive because people are used to hearing it written this way. I can see how people who are not regular listeners of the Rush Limbaugh show could read. I don't think any of them would buy it because what I will say, and this mitigates the danger of this book, the only people who are going to see Rush Limbaugh on a book's cover and buy it for their kids are right-wingers. But I can see how some kind of centrist book reviewer could read this big. Oh, it's actually not that bad because he's saying what is a party line. Yes. It's cool that he's doing this. Then there's some weird thatcher stuff here. America is a place where the individual person

serves himself and his family, not the king or ruling class or government, which is like, Margaret Thatcher's big thing is like, we don't have a society. There's no such thing as society. There are individuals and there are families. This is like a very central conservative idea, in part because conservatism rests heavily on the atomization of the individual from other individuals. The best way to do that is to separate people into this false idea of a nuclear family that's like the building block of civilization as opposed to communities of people engaging with each other for mutual benefit and support, which is where things actually happen. But if you get everyone atomized into this, no, you and your family are thinking because what he talks about

here, when people have the freedom to look for a better future, what he means is that you as an individual have a freedom to try and earn a better future for your family. But you as a person who is part of a collective, as part of a class, don't have any, like that is not part of the conservative vision of freedom, which is part of why like they love shit like the suburbs, because when you live in the fucking burbs, you are inherently separated from people who don't live there, right? Like you're atomized. That's anyway. Even in the suburbs, you're on a smaller, like a smaller level, you're a separator from all your neighbors too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This book on the pilgrims is part of the great

tale of how the United States came to be. The pilgrims came to our shores more than a century and a half before our country was established in 1776. But their reasons for coming to the new world helped to sow the seeds of our nation. The story of the pilgrims and their arrival in the new world has been taught for hundreds of years. And in that time, the story has been tweaked and changed by people to the point that it is often misunderstood. I want you to know the real story. Okay. Oh boy, I bet you do not. Yeah. And I bet all of our listeners want to know the real story, but you know what they want to listen to more? Huh? Ads for these products and services now. And adventure through products and adventure through products and services. Our primary sponsor for this week

is my favorite sponsor, which is the organization with the plot to nuke the Great Lakes region, which I think we can all agree is a noble endeavor. Just get rid of them. Just get rid of those lakes or make them into one lake. Make them into one lake. Whatever you do. Just nuke them, you know? Yeah. Nuke the Great Lakes. Or don't. Anyway, here's our sponsors. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you get to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

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I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Sophie hates it when we talk about Nuke in the Great Lakes. That's because she thinks that all of the brave men on the Edmund Fitzgerald deserve to die. Sophie. She's nodding along.

I was just praising the construction of this book and most of the illustrations are pretty well put in. This one, this one is not. This one's not great. I love it. I'm looking. It is a very crude Photoshop of like a ready faced, pill addict, Rush Limbaugh's head on a colonial body. It's a jib jab. It's a jib jab. It's a jib jab. It looks shitty. And in his head, here's the best part. He's got a little map and it says it's listing out like the northeast coast. It's got like Newfoundland, Cape Cod, New England, Virginia. But instead of spelling Plymouth, right? I want you to see, Cody, can you read out how he spelled Plymouth or can you see? It's all reversed on the thing. What the hell? Oh, it's all going to be reversed on the thing. P L I M O T H. Wait, no, fuck you.

Wait. Yeah. Why does he spell it Plymouth? Oh, buddy. Because nobody cared that much about the facts. They wanted to make this look enticing to kids. And I think it does again. It's a colorful book. But yeah, that's just shit. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. Nobody read it and cared. Yeah. No, I mean, it was a New York Times bestseller. These were all number one on the bestseller list when they dropped. Yeah, but nobody cares. Yeah, we'll hope. I mean, like, well, I mean, I can't speak for this book. I don't know the details, but a lot of these books, especially somebody like Rush Limbaugh, will buy them in bulk. Yes. Yes. So if they get on that, it is unclear. I mean, again, Rush was on every day when I was a kid. So like a lot of people

worshiped this dude. 2013 and 14 is a little bit past his his best of date, but he was still influential. I mean, I don't really know. I can't I obviously because of things like that because of how like effective the right is at gaming the New York Times bestseller list. I cannot tell you how actually influential these books were. But I mean, I just as a kid who listened to him almost every day for years and years, I do feel like there's a pretty decent chance there's a lot of kids who were like, because if you were nine or 10 back when this book came out, you're 18 or 19 right now. We got to have some listeners that have read these books. Because it's like for middle schoolers and stuff. So yeah, they put them in school libraries. 10 to 12, 13, 14, maybe is kind

of like the age for this, maybe like nine to 12, something like that. But I kind of suspect there's a lot of like great griper types who encountered these books when they were kids. Yeah. Got copies. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, yeah, I'm trying to find the because they have usually the New York Times on their bestseller list. They have a little icon next to books on the list to indicate if a lot of them have been bought in bulk, because they know that that's one of the one of the they probably didn't have that back then. They probably didn't have it back then. I do need to I need to know real quick. Sorry, the jib jab photo of him inside the book that you show us. Yeah, the expert, the face, the face of him. And you can confirm this for me if you could. It's the same

photo from the cover, his head. Yeah. And it's the same head from the second and third book cover as well. Yeah, I think they just keep sticking the same head and they just pop it on, which is inconsequential. But you know, yeah, it's a big detail. So the book opens with our character Rush Revere on the deck of the Mayflower, like vomiting over the side or trying not to vomit. He's like sick and queasy. He's just teleported to the year 1620 and only been on the boat a little while. I tell you, when I think of Rush Limba, I assume he's vomiting. I'm also he also makes me nauseous. I have to say, that is the only believable way to introduce the story with Rush Limba. I buy it historically accurate. Now, the best way the most the most believable way for

this to open is if he starts off vomiting, then guzzles down another three or four oxys and starts weekly masturbating to like a 40 year old sports illustrated magazine. That's that's really the intro to Rush that I believe the most. Well, we'll see what happens next, I guess. This was not my first encounter with someone from the past, although I was feeling extremely queasy. I tipped my hat and introduced myself while trying not to fall over. I'm not a saint or a separate. The guy has asked him like we should throw all you whatever. I'm Rush Revere. I said I'm a history teacher from the 21st century. I've come to the 24th century. Blimey, you're mad. The whole lot of you. You think I care if you make it to New England? The sailor laughed. So this is a sailor who doesn't

care about the people who are on the Mayflower because they're all religious extremists, which yeah, I guess fair. So OK, he pukes on this guy. I know this for middle schoolers and he probably didn't even write it, but that's really terrible. Well, it's all terrible. So he pukes on this sailor and the sailor threatens to beat him up. And so he runs to his horse who is named Liberty for help. Now, Cody, I know you have a lot of questions. The book's about to answer them. Oh, look, I know what you're thinking. What's a horse doing on the deck of a Mayflower in the middle of a storm? Tossy Tossy. Good question. The truth is my Liberty is no ordinary horse. All right. And then I actually was wondering that. I'm going to be honest. The surf and stuff. Yada,

yada, yada. The guy's threatening. OK, so this dude is coming after him and he finds this horse and his horse says, I hope you can fly. And OK. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Liberty can talk, writes Rush. I told you who wasn't an ordinary horse before the man could even turn around to see who had spoken. Liberty kicked his hind legs and sent the sailor sailing high into the eye. And then he fell into the air and then he fell into a web of nets. Perfect shot, Liberty said. You appeared in the nick of time, I said, starting to feel sick again. Leaping into the Mayflower in the middle of a storm wasn't my idea, Liberty said, speaking very fast. Yes, I can leap to different times in American history,

but I'm not OK. So the horse is the time traveling. I see. Yeah. You know, look, he's at least getting to the point here. Yeah, he's also very hungry, which I'm not going to read all of that. That's apparently the thing that's funny is that I know the horse. Hungry for pills. This is the first book. Yes, Cody. I know like it's, you know, it's customary recommend. It's a good idea to like start in the middle of your action, you know, like there's it. And like, this is a really bad way to start this book series. It is. So one of the things we learn here is the horse, as because he gets so sick, takes him back to modern day America. So there's medicine. Well,

in order to travel through time, the horse has to say a catchphrase. There's two different ones. I think there's the to get back to the modern time. It has to say rush, rush, rushing from history. And then I'm guessing to history is the other way it works. That's a reasonable guess. Yeah, that's the prologue. Now we're in chapter one, where he's back at his job as a high school or middle school or whatever. Yeah, yeah, middle school. Yep. Yep. The school bell rings, yada, yada principle Sherman also comes into the class. Oh, boy, I wonder if Sherman's going to be a bad guy because Sherman beat the Confederacy. I don't know. We'll see if this principle winds up sucking pin in that one. The principle of Manchester Middle School was not a small man.

If the door frame were any smaller, the principal would have to duck his head and twist his way into the classroom. I stood outside in the hallway as the door closed but watched and heard what was happening through the door small window. Attention, everyone, please take your seats, said the principal with authority. He stood at the front of the classroom, hands at his sides, while his eyes scanned the desks and chairs. I have an important announcement. The room went silent. It was apparent that the principal Sherman did not tolerate disrespect. I have some unfortunate news, he said. Your teacher, Ms. Borington, needed some extra time away from the Academy to help care for a sick family member

in the Academy. Nobody calls a middle school the Academy. Academy. Okay, whatever. Anyway, he's introducing his substance. We had health insurance and if nurses were covered, she wouldn't have to take time off from school. But yeah, it doesn't rush like not think people should take time off and like would want this like teachers pay doctor and stuff. He does not explain this. He just calls it a middle school. But the fact that he says it's an Academy and the principal announces that they have only the best teachers here. I think this is a fancy private school for rich kids. Only the best teachers. Yes, only the very best of teachers. Say the exceptional teachers, I would say actually an exceptional school. Oh, wow. So there's

exceptional than others. There's like a whole diet tribe in here about the name Rush and how it's not a weird name. So he comes in and he like writes his name on the school board or on the chalkboard before I even had and then like a girl raises her hand after he writes his name on the chalkboard before I had a chance to even call on her. She asked your first name is Rush. That's weird. And why are you dressed like that? She said, I could tell that this student was all business. If there were a pecking order in this class, she would probably be at the top of the food chain. I look at my seating chart and replied, thank you, Elizabeth. Do you go by Liz? She rolled her eyes and nearly grunted no. Unlike some people, I have a real name. It's Elizabeth. It's a lovely

name. If you like four syllables, I said rate winking. If you must know, my real name is Rusty, but when I was your age, my favorite class was history. In fact, I found myself rushing to history class every day I had it. I would rush from my home, rush down the street and rush through the school until I was sitting. Wait, he told her. Eventually, my teacher started calling me Rush and it stuck. Is this a true story from this? No, that's not his actual. His given name is Rush. Yes, that's his actual given. Rush Hudson Limbaugh. Yes. That's his fucking name. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's yeah. The third. Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the third. Yes. Rusty. Oh, yeah. It's that it's fucking unbelievable. Like first off, absolutely not.

Nobody's backstory like just like you're doing like. But you guys were so horrified. I would say well, Katie, I thought you were trying to slander the number one achievement in American artistic history, the film Hudson Hawk, which I will not stand for. No, no, no, no. Bruce Willis is greatest nay only contribution to civilization. The film Hudson Hawk talking. I'm going to let it slide. But watch Hudson Hawk, people. Great film. So yeah, he then explains why he's dressed. Apparently he's dressed obviously the way he's dressed in the gym. Clip art on the cover as like a colonial dude. So he explains that. Can you anyone guess who I'm dressed as? Students raised their hands. They guess George Washington. Good guess. But no, however, I am dressed as

someone who fought in the same Revolutionary Wars, George Washington, and they assuredly knew each other. Are you Thomas Jefferson? Asked another student. Sure. No, however, another good guess. Yada, yada, yada. He's he keeps saying more white men because they can't tell the difference. Yes. Yes, it's fucking Paul Revere. So he has he has fucking interactions with these school children, which boy, we just don't need to talk about that. Okay, then he brings his horse into class liberty. Yeah, I get the horse. I don't think we're ever going to explain how he got the horse. I'm sure at some point we're going to learn where the horse came from. But yeah, he but it'll be like we'll learn it through like somebody asking where did you get the horse and he'll explain it.

And that'll be that. All the girls are all the kids are scared of the horse except for a girl named freedom. Well, I did I did once go to a school where kids rode their horses school. Yeah. But that was it was for a bit. Yeah, it was for a bit. What? What? Okay, so let's let's move past this school section because boy, we just don't need this goes on for pages. They're just talking. Get to the history. What the heck? We don't need any of this. So, Jesus, God. Okay, finally, finally, he takes a bunch of kids with him into the past. Yeah, they go rush, rush, rushing to history. They're excited about the horse.

There's no slip for that. I don't know. I don't I don't think about that. I think all I think actually I assume all children and their parents consent to go back in time if the teacher can time track if asked. Yeah, yeah, that that actually does seem fair. The trip like a tragic school bus, right? Oh, guys. No, thank God, we're cutting that. We're just we're just canceling for that one. The trip through the time portal was like jumping through a hoop. Instantaneously, we landed in Holland. I quickly surveyed the geography and discovered we were in a field not far from the Dutch port of Delftschaven. Thankfully, we were alone. Why? So he doesn't get to decide where he's going. He just hops on the horse and then like

pops over to somewhere sometime. Yeah, he's in fucking I guess Holland, because that's where the they set off from the he's looking for pilgrim. Well, Puritans. Right. Right. Oh, good. And now he's whitewashing the Puritans. This is great. The woman turned in my direction but didn't stop walking. She stared at me as if I were some strange animal at a zoo. She quickly replied, if you're looking for Puritans, you found us. These the Puritans. I had always imagined the pilgrims is in clothing that was black, white and gray. However, these people wore clothing that was dyed every color of the rainbow, a yellow shirt, blue britches, green stockings, a red dress, a purple knitted stocking cap.

I was sorely mistaken to think that I knew what the pilgrims wore every day. It was time to get my class involved. Class, I said, these are the real pilgrims. I pointed the lens of my smartphone towards the large group that had gathered. I guess they're watching it through his phone or some shit. I'm sorry. He is not taking into account how irresponsible this is to just all of these children in a different time. I mean, you could drastically change the events of history. I mean, that would be the best case scenario, right? If they somehow got these people killed and so they didn't colonize the North. Yeah. Yeah. Give them a few more years to get ready. All right. So, we're learning about the fucking pilgrims and, boy, I just do not want to. No, no, no. I absolutely

do not want to because I know there's some weird socialism shaming coming in the part about the actual colony that they make. Yeah. So, let's skip forward to that a bit here. Boy, this has been like 10 pages of him talking about how cool the Puritans are because they separated from the Church of England and how they really just loved liberty as opposed to being weird religious extremists who wanted to be able to oppress people without having to live under anyone else's rules. Anyway, I guess it makes sense that he would want to whitewash them for that, right? Yeah. So, he travels back into the present, into the classroom to talk to the kids about what they've learned and then Principal Sherman walks in. Yeah. And it's a whole thing. The principal

demands an explanation because he's heard some weird shit. An explanation, I stalled. Well, yes, of course. I realized that Principal Sherman would eventually find a yellow wooden shoe outside the classroom window. So, I began. We were discussing the pilgrims and how they left England to escape religious persecution and settled in Holland along the journey to the New World. I brought a wooden Dutch shoe from my trip to the Netherlands. It's a bit of show and tell. And Principal Sherman interrupted me and said, pointing, you mean like the one that's broken and splintered on the floor here? I had forgotten about that one. Yes. And apparently wooden shoes are not very sturdy. Principal Sherman walked over to the window and saw the

second shoe lying on the grass near a big oak tree. And yet that one looks just fine. I joined him at the window and said, OK, so this is all very boring. Boring. It's very boring. It's very boring and bad. OK. Wow. When do we get there? When do we get there? When do we get there? There is fireworks. Yeah, where's the good stuff? There are surprisingly more random classroom bullshit and discussion of Puritans in here than there is actual narrative action going on. Why? I was told this was an adventure series. Where's the adventure? I'm not getting. Oh, OK, but it looks like we're going to get some explanation here. So, he has this kid, Tommy, who's like the little shit in the class starts like bagging on him for his horse.

And yeah, OK. So, OK, here's him explaining. This is the explanation for how the horse can travel through time. It appears that lightning may have struck liberty and created a supernatural phenomenon or a time portal that thrust him forward in time to our day. The electrical properties that charged through his body and the vortex that sent him to the future changed him physically and mentally. He can not only talk and disappear, but he's also, I pause, trying to formulate the right words. Freedom finished my sentence and said, a time machine. What? Tommy said confused. Did I miss something? Did you just say time machine? He's more like a time portal, I said to clarify. He has the ability to momentarily open a time door anywhere in history.

Well, more specifically, anything that touches American history. Tommy started laughing. OK, this is a joke. I'm on to you. This is some reality TV show called The Biggest Bozo Who Believes Anything, right? Where are the cameras? Tommy started looking around the room. He then looked back at freedom and back at me. Both of us were dead serious. You believe this guy? Tommy asked freedom, sticking his thumb out at me. Wait a second, wait, wait, wait. What? I thought the horse was named Liberty. The horse is Liberty. Freedom is the girl in the class who likes Rush Limbaugh. Oh, my God. Come on. You didn't catch that, Cody. What? You didn't catch that? None of us caught that. Oh, yeah. Maybe I skipped ahead a little

much. But yes, freedom is the girl who's immediately on board for all of his weird ass bullshit. That's great. Fuck, man. Cody, it's called subtext. You can't just do that to me. It's called subtext, OK? I don't think it is. Cody, I know that you don't. It's called human text. You aren't an author like me, so you don't understand the complexities of literature. But when you want to say that a character is good, you name her Liberty and then people or freedom, I forget which. But either way, people know they're a good guy. I see. Do you see? It's subliminal. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, I don't know. If I say it's like Nietzsche, enough people probably haven't read Nietzsche that they'll just assume that I'm not lying.

It is like it's like Nietzsche. Yeah. No, it's like you fucking name your character Shepard or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You name your character Shepard because he's hot and he fucks like a stallion. That's that. That's why you would do that as an author. He's very wooly. So, you know, it's probably time for another ad break. Let's just do let's just get the fuck out of here, Rush. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover

investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And on the gun badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not

an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can

imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991. And that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we're back. So freedom tries to convince Tommy that Rush isn't lying about his time travel.

Tommy is the hero of this story. Also, like, Rush, just say magic. Oh boy, there's something else going on here. Yeah, I love that he's now like, he is in the text of his book, sweatily defending the time travel mechanism that he's written into it. Also, Rush, just have this substitute teacher be an inventor who made, like, he can also have a talking horse sidekick. Why is the horse have to be the time machine? That's just sweaty and stupid. And it causes all of these questions that could be answered by saying, I built a time machine. Right, right. And I made my horse smart because you know what? If you establish that this character is an inventor who's built a time machine, I'll believe that he has a talking horse that he

science to do. It's fine. It's fine. That is not going to be my problem with your work. If you do it that way. That wouldn't be complicated enough. He was struck by lightning. And so he can only travel through American history. But he also just traveled to Holland. So again, does it just mean that like, where is the line go there? Right? Because the people who were in Holland, some of them later went to the Northeast, but none of them ever lived in the United States. But it was like American pre, but does that mean that like you could go back to ancient Rome because the founding fathers based a lot of our republic on the way the Romans did things like war does that mean you go back to

Africa, right? You know, yeah, could you travel back to when like the Portuguese first started exploiting slaves from Africa, because that's as much a part of the history of this country as the landing on Plymouth, not explained by Rush Limbaugh. But boy, he does go to like Chris, like the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and just like hang out there. Like, yeah, is he going like, yeah, this is all part of American history. Is he, for example, going back further than the 1600s to like, you know, indigent, like the Cahokia, right? And like modern day, like Missouri, Illinois area, and like talking, no, I'm guessing he's not. I mean, you probably like, can you go to like fucking Greece because you talk about democracy?

Right. Yeah. Are you, are you going to China because they invented gunpowder and played a crucial role in the colonization of North America? None of this will be answered. Well, that's all decided by the horse. So Tommy and freedom and Rush continue their argument. Hey, I might be crazy, but I'm not that crazy. Okay. Tommy said he got up from his desk and started pacing the floor. He took off his baseball cap and combed his fingers through his blonde hair. He sighed, I have to think about this for a minute. We probably shouldn't show them the other thing I can do. Should we? I mean, he seems a little freaked out right now. Liberty said, no, I said firmly. I took a deep breath. I need to finish our story. I believe the lightning

created the time portal to the modern day. Oh my God. Tommy put his baseball. Sorry. He's going on arguing about the lightning. This is like, again, just say magic and we're done. Just say magic and we're good. Magic, science, it's fine. But also like, he hasn't taught me anything yet. Very fancy academy. That kid cannot wear a baseball cap inside. No, no, he's wearing some insufferable uniform. Yes, exactly. And again, probably not horses allowed inside either, but we'll let it slide. Also like it's a talking horse. Yeah, it is a talking mother fucking horse. Mr. Ed, that's the one that talked, right? Yes, it is. Okay. It's one of the two famous horses that can talk. And the other is Wilbur. No, the other one is Liberty from Russia Limbaugh's

adventures. He keeps. He keeps. This is now like two pages of arguing with this child about the lightning bolt. He can't handle not arguing, I think it's amazing. You can't explain in a room full of children. Tommy put his baseball cap back on and said, OK, OK, maybe it is possible. I mean, I don't think the lightning hit him directly. Technically, a direct hit would have killed him. But I guess there's a possibility that several bolts could have simultaneously. What is it? Where is that possibility? Causing an electrostatic prism and maybe the positive and negative charge carriers combined with the acoustic shockwaves create him some kind of time hold. Liberty. What is this conversation they're having? What is happening? Again, this is a history

adventure book. This isn't even like. Man. It's because it's not even like he figured it out and he's like got like an explanation for it. Is this like the character guessing? Yeah. In complicated ways. And we're just we're now explaining how like Liberty, when they came for the future, met Rush and like how shocking the world was. This is my point. There's a fucking book in the past with his magic horse and then do this like whole sequence, like show him meeting the horse. Yeah, it's like we're not going to do that. I know. Yeah, we're absolutely not going to do that. We have an illustration on this next page. And again, this is all just Liberty explaining how they met. Boy, there doesn't seem to be any explanation for this at all. There's just a

picture of him holding a modern day iced tea can with an American flag that says to if by tea underneath it, I don't know why that was put in here. What's happening on the page opposite from it? Like he's talking Liberty. He and Liberty are talking about fucking how about his fucking horse, right? How his horse came through time. What page are we on right now in the book? 45. My God. My God. If I bought this, you bought this book. So we have children something presumably. And so far, it's just been nonsense. So far, we have learned that the Puritans were just a bunch of nice people who wanted religious freedom as opposed to religious extremists. And they wore something different than what Rush thought. And we have spent pages talking about

how lightning strikes could conceivably give the ability to time travel. That is that is the primary fact dump we've gotten so far in this. Really lacks dress code at this academy. Yeah, it's another talking about when football happened because Tommy's a football player, even though he knows a lot about lightning. That's a boy, this is just this is just ridiculous. We don't need. We don't know. No, no. And when does the history start? That's a great question. Oh, good. So Tommy gets on the horse. Now we've got a picture of Tommy riding back in time on the horse. So I'm going to guess that's what happens in the pages I've skipped. He's sitting on the back of Rush's head and getting bigger and bitter in relation to the

other. Yeah, so they are trying to land undetected on the Mayflower. The time portal opened just as it did moments earlier. What do you do with all the other kids? Are they just unattended? Katie, you're going to have some open questions about this because I am not going through every fucking page of this stupid. No, it makes sense. Yeah. Okay. The picture doesn't explain. Therefore, I cannot tell you. We're not going to be hitting every plot point here. The time portal opened just as it did moments earlier. As clearly as possible, I pronounced each word. September 6th, 1620, Plymouth, England, the launching of the Mayflower. I had found that giving the exact date location and name of the historical event helped Liberty get us to where we needed. Of course.

Yeah, directions. You don't need to explain that. I understand why you would do that. Anyway, the sensation of jumping through time was always the same. The rush of air sent goose bumps over my body. The hair on my arm stood on end. And for a second, it feels like it does when you're swinging backwards on the seattle. Okay, so there's an orgasm. It does sound like he's coming. He should never use the word rush unless you're referring to your character. Yeah. So they have Liberty go into stealth mode and pretend not to be a talking horse so they can sneak on the Mayflower, which is easy because some of the pilgrims had second thoughts. One of the pilgrims, William Bradford, who he met in Holland remembers him and says,

Rush Revere, it does my heart good to see you again. And is this the person you were waiting for in Holland? He smiled affectionately while straightening Tommy's brown leather hat. Yes, this is Tommy, I said, as I put my arm around Tommy's shoulder. His parents are gone, so I'll be caring for him on this voyage. It's a pleasure to meet you, Tommy. Bradford said, as he reached out his hand to Tommy, who shook it, William turned back to me and said, let's talk some more after the ship set sail. The captain is very eager to leave. Boring. Boring. We get some public domain. We got like four pages of public domain photos of the fucking Mayflower, like drawings of it and shit. What was your question about Tommy?

I mean, we're not going to have an answer for it, but is Tommy just wearing 2013? No, no, no. He's dressed. He's got a leather cap on, right? They gave them, they found clothes for him. They replaced his baseball hat. I am going to fill in a blank here and say, Rush Revere traveled forward in time, found a pilgrim child separated from his family, cut his throat with a straight razor and took the clothing from him. It makes sense. Yeah, it's a little bit of a, this is also an assassin's creed. There's like half of the chapters are like really boring, but about aliens and stuff. Just Rush Limbaugh and his hoodie running around. Speaking of, by the way,

speaking of fiction stories that did not need to explain things as much as they wound up doing, Assassin's Creed made the same mistake as the Rush Revere novels. Nobody needed any of that. You don't need that section at all. People just want to murder folks in different time periods. You don't need to do a whole thing. Like that's not necessary. I wasn't confused. I didn't have questions. It's like if the Grand Theft Auto series like added a very sweaty, like whole fucking series of missions about how you're like a time traveling super powered person. And that's why you never die in the car. We don't, we don't need that. None of that's necessary. That's not why I'm here. Yeah. Not here for the lore. Sorry. Yeah. Not, not here for the lore.

Okay. So Puritans, boy, just a lot more Puritans traveling on a boat with most of this is not history. It appears to be like them encountering random people and like there's like three pages where Tommy meets a pilgrim kid who has a puppy and they talk about puppies. They talk about how uncomfortable boats are, which I don't. Yeah, it's, it's great. This is, this is a shit book, guys. This is a real shit book. It seems really bad. Like not like as a history book and as an adventure book. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And it's like just like as a, as a like a children's book. I mean, like, does he ever, what is he, what are, what am I supposed to learn from this? Like, what am I supposed to be being taught? You're not supposed to learn anything from this. And look, I'm not

going to keep digging through this, but there is one thing I wanted to hit that I read when I was reading reviews of this. No, it's kind of about some of the weird politics. And so I think we'll close on that. But I would be doing, I would be doing a disservice if I didn't like bring it up. Yeah. Here we go. Oh boy. This, this is a different review than the one I've read, but I have to read it. This is from a review that some like homeschooling mom wrote, I think. Reading the series has given us a nice break from traditional schooling. My kids automatically preferred it over textbooks or looking at encyclopedias. They were drawn into the story of Rush Revere at the middle school he teaches and his students. They liked that there was time travel involved.

Yeah. Although she says she, she had a hard time getting into the series. When it came to the history in the books, the narrative, narrative did tend to get a bit bookish. On one hand, we got to know many of the real characters that shaped America, yada, yada. On the other hand, the series, the characters would sometimes seem to go on a rant, spending a good time, amount of time explaining historical events and facts a bit unnaturally through chunks of dialogue. That's because all of the bits where he's explaining history, read like fucking, uh, uh, like Wikipedia pages that were just like copied and pasted out. So she doesn't like the part where you're teaching your children something. Well, uh, yeah. I mean, I think because it's bad writing, like I'll give her that.

It's, it's not. It is bad. Yeah. It sounds like she wasn't interested in like learning that much. Yeah. And it's poorly written. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's bad. It's a bad book series. Um, but yeah. So like one of the, there, there's a, because it's Rush Limbaugh, there's like a weird bit of, uh, anti-collectivist shit in here. I'm going to read from that Chicago Tribune article anyway. Or again, Limbaugh, like other conservatives, seizes upon the pilgrim story as an example of the terrible things that can happen when people pool their resources in a collectivist manner. The author seems particularly offended by the idea of a common house at Plymouth. To him, the pilgrim suffered, suffered from the evils of communism and survived only by belatedly

injecting individualism and free enterprise into their settlement. And like the basis of this is that they used to have the pilgrims had common ownership of like food and fields and stuff when they came and eventually like decided to give families their own land and that caused people to produce more corn or something. And this is all bits of history that, that people take out and politicize. But yeah. So he's, he's, he's, there's definitely pieces of this that he takes out for his lesson. But I think most of this is basically him writing this weird, sweaty sci-fi story about a middle school teacher and occasionally like cribbing and rewriting chunks of Wikipedia pages and like throwing them into the mouths of historical figures like William Bradford to info

dump about the most boring aspects of history. Anyway, that's, that's, that's the book. It's this like sweaty mix of propaganda and horse lightning debates. I mean, I'm thrilled that you invited us to, to participate in this. Did you all learn something? I learned about liberty and freedom. I learned about liberty and freedom. Not the concepts, just the, the horse and the students. The people, but yeah, the characters. Tommy rules. I hope he doesn't change his mind and think. I don't think he does, Cody, because Tommy, Tommy is the one who provided us with our, our scientific explanation for the time travel that we absolutely needed. Yeah. Otherwise, where would we be right now? Yeah. Otherwise, where would we be right now? Well, you know,

where we are right now is at the point in the episode where y'all plug your motherfucking plugables. Hell yeah. We got stuff to plug. Check out our YouTube channel. Some more news. Do that. We got a three hour episode about Jordan Peterson. Sure do. You do have a three hour episode about Jordan Peterson. So check that out. Go spend three hours with Jordan Peterson, just like those doctors in Russia who, who performed days and days and days with him, many days with him while he was unconscious. Because they weren't allowed to do that in America. Going cold turkey on pinsoes. He's fine now. He's fine now. He's great. He doesn't, if you take, if you look at a picture of him from 2017 and a picture of him from this year, it doesn't look like he's lost 70 pounds

and also his mind. And like not at all. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't look like he's aged 25 years in the last three. It doesn't look at all like he picked up the wrong grail. Yeah. There's, there's nothing unsettling about his tendency to periodically cry at random moments. He's fine. He's doing very fine. We have other episodes too, to be clear, but uh. But that is one of them. Anyway, thanks. Thanks. Check us out online. Thanks all. I love you all. Like Rush Revere loves his horse. Liberty. You can even say. Which everyone isn't the girl. His lightning horse. Is, yeah, is like a shockwave powered a horse. God. I mean, there's no. It merely opened up a portal with its lightning. There's only one line I can responsibly end on, which I'm glad he's dead.

I continue to be glad he's dead. If it weren't for everything else, he would deserve to die for writing this book. And book two and three and four and all of the like seven or five. How are many? There's too many of them. Robert, sometimes you really surprise me. I don't know what you're going to say. And it gives me just the most joy and genuine reaction. Oh, beautiful. It's beautiful. Look, I'm glad he's dead. And I'll go ahead and say it, you know, hunt down the illustrator from this book, figure out who did the jib jab and take them down. Yeah. Find jib or jab. Not sure which one, but it's one of them. Oh, God. All right. We're done. We're done. Bye. Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in

a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.