RUSH: Elena in San Jose, California. She’s 11-years-old and is an eager reader of the Rush Revere Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans series of books. Hi, Elena, how are you doing?
CALLER: Good.
RUSH: Well, wonderful. I’m glad you called. Let me ask, have you read all four of them?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: How many have you read?
CALLER: My grandpa is reading me the one about the Brave Pilgrims.
RUSH: Okay. So you’ve got the first one in the series?
CALLER: I have the first and second book. I’m asking for the other ones for Christmas.
RUSH: Oh, that would be so cool. You’re asking for the others? Well, there are actually three others.
CALLER: Hm-hm.
RUSH: You’ve asked for them for Christmas?
CALLER: Yes. I have the first two books.
RUSH: Okay, you’ve got the first two, so you’ve asked for them. Well, that’s great. I really hope you get them.
CALLER: Me, too.
RUSH: ‘Cause I’m so excited you’re reading them and that you like them. Did you have a question about them?
CALLER: Yeah. I have a question about the portal in the book. So when they go through the portal, let’s say it’s ten o’clock, when they come back out of the portal, is it ten o’clock or is it like two hours later?
RUSH: What a great question.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: Elena, that’s one of the greatest questions I have been asked by anybody about the book. Let me explain what she’s asking. In the Rush Revere series, I am Rush Revere. I’m a substitute teacher of Manchester Middle School, and I have a talking horse named Liberty who can time travel to anywhere in American history. It happened by virtue of a lightning strike. Liberty, the horse, got struck by lightning and all of a sudden could talk and time travel. And Revere has these students that he takes with him and they time travel back to actual events in American history, and that’s how the reader learns about the founding of America. It’s written for kids eight to 11, and we try capture their imagination and their dreams with all of this. And they just love these books. We’re on our fourth one now. Now, her question is an actual scientific question. When they time travel, how much time goes by when they’re gone, when they come back, what time is it? And here’s the answer, Elena. It’s essentially the same time when they left. When they time travel real time sort of stops so that when they get back nobody knows they were gone. I mean, if they’re in class and all of a sudden they time travel back to see George Washington and they’re gone for a day or two and then they come back, well, the class, “Where have you been the past two days?” They don’t want to have to explain that ’cause they can’t admit they’ve been time traveling, people will think they’re kooks. So we have structured it so that hardly any time goes by at all. They’re seldom missed when they get back.
CALLER: Because in the book it said that Tommy had to get back for his sword fighting lessons, and I was like, but I thought like no time is taken when they go on the time travel.
RUSH: Well, it’s a device that, you know, sometimes a little time goes by. We’re not doing this aspect of it in a scientific way, getting into what happens, ’cause time can’t actually stop.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Sometimes I wish it could, just, you know, for a couple hours’ sleep, I wish I could stop time. But we can’t. So, yeah, Tommy has to get back. But those are just conversation pieces as a way we write to end the time travel, Tommy’s gotta get back for a football game or sword fighting lessons, as you say, whatever. But it’s not specific, and to be honest with you, it’s not something that we are attempting to be correct about it in an Einstein theory of relativity type way. They just time travel and nobody knows they’re gone. It’s the simplest way to do the books.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Okay. Does that disappoint you? Were you looking for a different answer?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I was just looking for an answer.
RUSH: Well, that’s the way we do it. ‘Cause you can imagine, Elena, if they time travel, and they’re gone for an hour or two or maybe five hours, 10 hours or what, get back, and people know that they’ve been gone, how do they explain that?
CALLER: ‘Cause no one’s gonna believe that they were time traveling.
RUSH: Well, what if somebody did believe ’em and then wanted to go the next time?
CALLER: Then they’d be in trouble.
RUSH: Right. You can’t take everybody. Only a select few are qualified to go who will keep their mouths shut and not give it away.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: You know what some of my favorite parts are? Is when Tommy or some of the other kids, they’re talking to, say, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington and they start talking in modern day terms, and the founding fathers have never heard the terms and don’t know what they’re talking about, and they have to catch themselves real quick ’cause they can’t let the people back in the founding days know they’re from the future, either. See, that works both ways. That’d blow it sky-high.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So it’s a really, really, really great question. Now, Elena, I don’t know if you’re gonna get those books or not. But I would like to send you a Liberty stuffed cuddly animal.
CALLER: Really?
RUSH: Yeah. And a couple of other things. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
CALLER: Yeah, I have two sisters and one brother.
RUSH: How old are they?
CALLER: My brother is 14, and my sister, she’s about to turn 21, and my other sister is 24.
RUSH: Oh, wow, okay, so you’re the youngest of the four?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Okay. Well, now, you hang on, and Mr. Snerdley will get your name and an address that we can send you some stuff. In addition to Liberty, we’ll send some other things out, ’cause I’m really flattered that you like the books and that you’ve —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — gotten into it to the point you have that kind of question. That’s really a very, very smart question, and I want to congratulate you on that.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: Really, really, really insightful question. And it’s one that we had to stop and think about a lot as we were doing this, because we try to keep it as scientifically real as we can yet using literary license to allow us latitude here to get away with using the device of time travel. But it’s key, folks, to making these books what they are. I don’t know how you people learn history, you have facts recited to you, maybe you’re told stories about things, but I’ve always found that it’s much more fun to actually learn and it’s easier to learn if somehow you’re made part of it. Or if whatever is being taught historically is related to me somehow, and that’s what we try to do in the Rush Revere Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans series. But I’ll tell you what is behind this. The whole thing I’m talking about today, the way this country’s being transformed, the Founding Fathers of this country are being mischaracterized, their reputations are being impugned, the entire Constitution.
Have you seen the videos that were taken of students on the campus at Yale where they were asked if they thought it might be time to suspend the First Amendment? And, yeah, they think so. And, by the way, these are not the brainiac college students that you think of in the old days. These are just pop culture reactionaries. “Oh, yeah, if it offends somebody, sure! We ought to be able to forbid people saying things that make people mad. We ought to be able to forbid people saying things that hurt people’s feelings. Of course we should!”
It’s really scary, and because the history of this… Look, Obama’s transformation of this country is specifically about obliterating the history of the founding of this country and rewriting it and recharacterizing it as something that would justify his claim that our country is unjust and immoral and violates all the tenets of social justice. I mean, that’s what the Democrat Party is about today. So this is, you know, my little effort to try to hold onto the truth and the greatness, the uniqueness that is the United States of America.
The very idea that there are people born and raised here trying to destroy it, transform it, whatever. It breaks my heart. So this is our way of trying to counter some of the things young people are being told and being taught. We got four of ’em now, and the latest is Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner. You don’t have to read ’em in order. But it really helps to start out with Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, ’cause that sets the stage for all. Anyway, thank you again, Elena. I appreciate your call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So I checked the e-mail during the break, and here’s a question bouncing off of young Elena’s question: “Why can’t the kids and Rush Revere, who are time traveling…? Why can’t they let the people back in time know that they are from the future?” Well, that’s not complicated. I have seen enough science fiction movies to know that we didn’t want to do anything like that. We didn’t want to give critics one morsel of an ability to discredit the books, so we didn’t want anything that the time travelers do to change history.
And, you know, the old saw about going back and trying to change something. I mean, science fiction moves have been done about it, and you could imagine it. We didn’t even want to get near that, didn’t want to even touch it, ’cause we didn’t want any distractions from the fact that what we are writing about American history was the truth. So we didn’t even want to get close to playing any games where people could say that what we’re actually doing is going back and changing it. So the time travelers cannot admit where they’re from.
They have to take colonial clothes with them and change while they’re time traveling, or before. And they can sneak their iPhones back there, but there’s no cellular coverage or any of that, and there’s no way to charge ’em. So they gotta have their iPhones fully charged and do some video recording and so forth. If you run out of battery, you’re finished. And there’s no Wi-Fi, there’s no cellular coverage. You can’t make a phone call on it so the thing isn’t gonna ring. No, no, no. We played around with that, but that open up too many paradoxes. I mean, could be fun to do, but it’d open up too many cans of worms.