Time Patriot: What if Washington Was Here Now? | S01E09 - Reality Check: The Science of Fiction

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome back to the podcast where wediscuss the plausibility of sci fi concepts with
experts. I'm your host, HeidiCompo, and today we have a very
special episode. This will be thefirst book that we are featuring on the
show, and I would like towelcome Kim Mickey, the author of the
brilliant series The Time Patriot, whichis a science fiction masterpiece that explores the

(00:24):
concept of a group of modern timetravelers from the twenty thirties who travel back
in time to seventeen eighties to findGeorge Washington and convince him to come back
in time with them and help stopan imminent civil war. We're going to
be talking about time travel, history, politics, corruption, and exploring what

(00:45):
the Founding Fathers intended for our countrythrough the story brought to life by Kim.
I know that many of you havesome kind of a reading goal with
your New Year's resolution list, soI wanted to encourage listeners to consider checking
out the Time Patriot series. Andsince this is reality check, we will
still be scoring a concept at theend, but I also don't want to

(01:06):
spoil the book for you, soat the end of this episode, I
will ask him to rank in hisopinion from one to five how likely it
would be for a founding father tobe able to fix modern politics assuming we
could time travel and they agreed tocome back with us. So, without
further ado, let's get ready foranother mind blowing episode of Reality Check.

(01:26):
All thanks prepared for hypercrime active bigTRACTI being just engage tractor betue, you're
late for light speed like speed,it's too slow. All right, Reality
Check, Kim, welcome to theshow. Let's keep things off by telling
us a little bit about how yougot the idea for your book. Well,
it was pretty interesting to me anyway. You know, I've always been

(01:51):
a fan of time travel. I'dwritten several time travel stories already. And
Martha and I are retired from activeparticipation and then work the workforce. So
we watched a lot of television,and we do find ourselves a lot of
news programs. I should say wefollow politics more than most people do,
and we find the people on theTV say the the stupidest things and stuff

(02:15):
that is just completely ridiculous. AndI mean sometimes as a politician, sometimes
as a newscasters whatever, and uhso I just kind of wondered out loud.
I said, I wonder what ourfounding fathers would think about what we've
done with this experiment in Democratic Republic. And Martha said, well, you

(02:38):
got a time machine. Why don'tyou go ask them? That's that's what
came up without you. I went, hmm, you know, and I
thought what might be a good goodstudy. And originally we thought about Thomas
Jefferson. The reason we thought,well we actually we've thought of George Washington.

(03:00):
Knew it, everybody probably does GeorgeWashington. Let's do somebody else,
you know. And so we startedthinking about Thomas Jefferson. And then when
I started doing some research, Ifound out he was out of the country
at the time when they did theConstitution. He was ambassador to France,
so he wasn't involved in any ofthat stuff at all. So then we

(03:23):
started looking at other people and wefound out, and there's a book called
The Quartet about them, that there'sGeorge Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay
and James Madison. They were thefour people who, kicking and screaming helped
people in the United States come forwardto actually accept another boss, right,

(03:49):
I mean, they just got ridof the British and now they're gonna get
somebody local to do the same thing. Right, one of my good friends
says, old boss, same asthe new boss. So back it up
just a little bit here. Soyour wife said, well, hey,
you've got a time machine, whydon't you go ask them? And she

(04:10):
was referring to your first books thatyou had already written, because you were
an established author before you even startedthis series. Correct, Can you explain
to me a little bit about thistime machine that you created in your universe?
Because in sci fi there is alot of different concepts of time travel
because you know, we haven't reallyproved it yet, we haven't done it.

(04:30):
There's a lot of theories. Sowhat what kind of theories did you
explore when you were creating your timemachine in this universe? And what theory
did you go with for the timepatriot? Okay, there's there's a couple
of questions in there. There's actuallytwo ways to do science fiction. One

(04:55):
way is to uh is to gointo detail explanation about all the mechanics and
the physics, and that I callthat hard science fiction. And then there's
another kind called soft science fiction,where you uh, you present the idea
and and the reader makes a leapof faith to say, Okay, all

(05:18):
right, I'm going to assume that'spossible. Let's see what happens now.
And my stories are really more aboutpeople and about actions and stuff than they
are about the science that haven't beensaid. One of the one of the
time travel things, time travel theories. I really liked it. It was

(05:40):
in a movie, a movie calledTime Blind by Michael Crichton. Was the
book it comes from. I lovethat book. That's one of my favorite
books. It's an awesome book.And uh and uh, they made a
great movie out of it with GerardButler might have been the biggest heart throb
in the country at the time.I love you his mind when that movie
came out. Yeah, he didsuch a great job in the show.

(06:04):
And it was a young guy whowas popular from one of the uh one
of the Car a lot of thecar movies. I can't remember his name
now. That was Paul Walker,Paul Walker, right exactly. And he

(06:24):
was a big heart throb and andand he did a good job. But
I think Gerard Butler stole the show. Yeah, it's an awesome movie.
But their idea was the way theyput it was that basically your atoms were
reduced to a stream, and it'slike a fax machine going across which one

(06:47):
of the problems as if you wina lot of time, just like you
faxed something, then you fax it, get that and then you fax it
to somebody else, it eventually deteriorates. And in that in that book,
the same thing happened to the peopleas they were moved, As they were
you know, made more and moretrips, their body just started to deteriorate.

(07:10):
You know, for example, Iblood vessels might not line up correctly
and that kind of stuff, whichis all very dangerous. And it's so
funny that you bring up Timeline becauseI read that as a young child,
an elementary school kid, and Iremember when the movie came out, I
was still a child, and sothat was that was one of my first

(07:30):
sci fi books that exposed me totime travel. So it's so crazy to
me that you're explaining this concept becauseI was like, yes, that's the
one I'm most familiar with. Soit's another fun one. So the way
I approached in my first book,the idea was that the scientists who invented
time travel was a trekkie and hewas trying to develop a warp engine,

(07:57):
and he had disconnected and was testingand it's so point and that total accident.
He's touching it when it goes off, and it throws him twenty five
years in the past, and sohe's you know, he was in his
fifties, now he's in his twenties. And he goes back into the same
office he was working in where hewas a young guy, a new professor,

(08:20):
and so now there's two of them, and he has no way to
get back. So he ends up. You know, he and he and
his younger self work forward using thetwo of them. They're both very brilliant
guys, and they bounce stuff offof each other and they developed a way
to take care to make it workand return. So that's in the first

(08:46):
book called Time Limits, and that'sa playback to in my time travel,
you can go to any year that'sa twenty five year multiple of where you
are right now, in the futureor in the past. In other words,
you could go twenty five years,twenty five years ago, fifty seventy

(09:07):
five, one hundred like that.And you have a background is a math
educator. Is there a reason whyyou chose twenty five well, you just
seemed like a good number to me. That's a good answer. Yeah,
there's no there's no physics or anythingcalculations behind. I just thought so because

(09:28):
I did end up with three generationsof the same guy working together. So
one of them and at the timeof the books, one of them is
about one hundred years old, wasabout seventy five, the other was about
fifty so, and there are alot of other things I won't go into,
but they continue to be working ontheir warp engine ideal, and they're

(09:52):
also working, you know, comingup with new features for the time machine,
like a flexible return beacon. Likein Timeline, they had a return
beacon that they had around their neckand they pressed that to come back right,
and so they eventually ended up away. Over the course of four books,

(10:15):
they ended up with the ability toprogram in several, uh, several
locations. Each time you clicked thatyou went to the next one. And
also that they could hook their cellphones through it to send messages, to
send status messages. I kind ofignored the fact that the people in the
future, you know, no matterwhere they were coming from, the message

(10:37):
was gonna call like you know,like they go they're gone, Okay,
oh, here's a message, youknow, So we can we can.
And that's the beauty of fiction iswe can glaze over those little things so
we can still enjoy the whole plottogether. Fiction. I mentioned to you

(11:01):
before the show that I introduced alady Lady Ranger who is really tough.
And uh, there's this thing inthe first book where I picked a couple
of things. Did you ever seethe time Machine with Guy Pierce his version?
I feel like I did you jogmy memory or explain it with an

(11:26):
audience. Well, it's it's kindof a it's it's a new take.
It was a new take on theoriginal H. G. Wells, Uh,
right, book. And so butat the end, they are the
Morlocks who are the villains. Hegoes way way in the distant future,

(11:46):
and uh, there's a more lockwho tries to grab a hold of him,
and he hits the time machine buttonand he jumps out of there.
And of course the guy part ofpart of them is inside the bubble and
part of them is outside. Soit's just like truncated him and so ugly
death. And so I had asituation when they were testing the time machine

(12:11):
when my guys were testing the timemachine, and what they would do is
they have it kind of like alittle lawnmower thing and put it out on
a platform and then hit the buttonand send them someplace with a certain voltage
and certain settings. And then itwould have a camera that pointed straight up
at the sky. And they didit out in New Mexico, so when

(12:35):
he came back, they would seethe position of the stars in the sky
could get an estimate of where whatyear it was. So that's how they
were testing that. And it comesback one time and it's really kind of
it looks like it's got something piledon top of it. So one of
the guys runs over to it andhe gets way too close before he realizes

(12:58):
that I'm in back rattlesnake and andit jumps at him and he falls down,
but it lays right next to him, and this lady Rager jumps on
it. I mean she just jumpson, grabbing by the head and by
the tail, and uh so,uh, it was an opportunity to develop
two characters. Only one of themwas in the rest of that story that's

(13:20):
in the first book Time Limits,but that lady is a main character in
the next three books. Really yeah, and and her name is her name
and the story is Karen Hatcher againfrom Terry Hatcher. Okay, and I
don't want this episode to include spoilers. Usually I don't care about ruining my

(13:43):
movies because if you haven't seen,you know, Jurassic Park by now,
then this is probably not the rightthat you'd be interested in. But I
do want people to read these books, so I'm not going to give too
much away. But I do thinkit's really funny when your Ranger when she
does meet Washington, and it's like, I think we can give that away.

(14:05):
It's like they do successfully travel backin time. That's the whole point
of the book. She meets Washingtonand he's just so confused. He's like,
you have women in the military.But he was such a forward thinking
person that he accepted it pretty quickly. He was like, Okay, this
can make sense for me based onthe logic that you're providing. So can
you tell us about your process oflearning about Washington and bringing him to life,

(14:33):
because the Washington you created in thesebooks, I think is the most
vivid and personable Washington that I've everread about personally, I can tell you
a little bit about it. Igot a hold of what I was looking
for. Was once we figured outwe couldn't use couldn't use Thomas Jefferson,

(14:56):
and we found the quartet, andthen I focused on everything I saw said
that Washington was the main driver ofthe Constitution. So I said, okay,
what about George Washington? How canwe pick what can we do for
him? And so I started thinkingwhere do where would give it our twenty

(15:16):
five year multiple thing? And they'rein twenty thirty seven, what where can
they intersect Washington and in seventeen eightyseven, that's two hundred and fifty years
back, So that's a multiple.The interesting thing about it is that from

(15:37):
the end of the war in seventeeneighty three and when they get everything going
for the for the United States inseventeen eighty nine, he went back to
being a farmer, that's what hedid, and then went back to his
to his engineering around his farm.But so I was thinking, how do

(15:58):
I get how do I get thisguy by himself to have a minimum of
interruption and least impact the history.And so luckily, when uh, when
Washington was part of the Virginia volunteerswho fought against the Indians and the French

(16:19):
in the French and Indian War.Washington was a young young lieutenant, I
believe, and actually inavertently caused amajor scandal. Uh. He went with
some Indians and he's trying to meetpeaceably and talk to some guys, and
one of the Indians goes over andwhacks the guy in the head with an

(16:41):
axe, and so so Washington's gotin a lot of trouble about that.
But overall, because of what allhe did do, he was rewarded by
a property on the other side ofthe Alleghenies, and so where that comes
into play. He frequently went duringthat period seventeen eighty three to seventy eighty

(17:03):
nine. He would get on hishorse and go with his manservant, William
Lee, slag Willim Lee, andmaybe a couple of other people, sometimes
with a big roue garage. Buthe would go across the mountains, across
the mountains of a Virginia and intothe Alleghany area and to check on the
property he had and you know,kick off squatters or get him to start

(17:26):
paying rent or whatever. So thatwas an excellent opportunity to catch him while
he's making that journey with a smallgroup, and so it was easy to
get there and actually have him byhimself. And that's one thing I really
appreciated about this book because sometimes youread or watch sci fi and it's just

(17:49):
so far fetched that it just takesme out of the story and I'm just
rolling my eyes, like this isjust ridiculous. But your characters like their
even their thought profit because when they'rehaving their meeting, they're like, hey,
where can we get him? Well, why don't we just jump forward
this time? Like, no,that's not going to work if he's already
has these things going on. Sothere was a lot of history built into

(18:11):
this, and I feel like itwas like I'm a little embarrassed at I'm
not the biggest history buff, butI was even learning along with this,
and it was a fun way forme to learn. So you have a
pretty healthy background in history. Didyou have to do a lot of extra
research to bring this story to life? I did do a lot of research.

(18:36):
My idea about science fiction is that, as I said before, you
want to build something and have aleap of faith that the person says Okay,
I'll believe that, and then okay, if I believe that, you
know, I'll pretend that's true.Make that leap of faith, and then

(18:56):
see where the story goes. SoI'm a firm believer in making that leap
as small as possible. So whatI try to do is really try to
figure out where Washington was, whathe was thinking about, and all during
this time he was corresponding with otherpatriots about the fact that the Articles of

(19:21):
Confederation were not working because and ifwe'd kept them, and that's one part
of the story. If Washington isnot there for the convention, there's a
good chance that the Constitution never getswritten or ratified and we exist on the
Articles of Confederation, which is notunlike, not seriously unlike the European Union.

(19:45):
Got all these countries that do whatthey want to do, and they're
tied together by the European Union,but when it comes down to their area,
they're going to do what they gotto do. That is interesting.
And the Washington you painted for us, you know the fact that he when
he got done in the military withhis service, and he did have this

(20:07):
period where he went back, Imean he worked as a farmer. It
almost makes me kind of think ofthe character Maximus from a Gladiator when Caesar
asks him, he asks him,please, will you come be emperor?
And he's like, with all myheart, no, I want to go
back to my farm and my family. And it kind of is that reminder
that some of the greatest leaders don'tnecessarily want to lead. They just want

(20:29):
to live a humble, quiet lifeon their farm with their family. But
they see a great need and theyfeel the call to that leadership, not
because they want it, not becausethey want the power or the glory,
because they it's the servant leadership.And that I see that with Maximus as
a character, and I see thatwith the way you brought Washington to life.

(20:51):
Is that servant leadership and how hetruly just wanted to be a humble
guy living on his farm, enjoyinghis life, but he felt the call
of duty and he responded, Yeahhe did. And he was an interesting
guy. I learned a few thingsabout him that I had no idea about,

(21:11):
like what well. One is thathe had a legendary stink eye.
In other words, if you saidsomething he didn't agree with, you could
tell it by looking at his face. So that's something that him and I
have in common. That's right.Well I don't know that as as from

(21:33):
my experience with you, but it'sright. I mean, you know,
he apparently, you know, somebodysaid something he thought was stupid, or
said something that he vehemently didn't agreewith, he would give that look,
and everybody knew where they stood withhim. I suspect it's part of like,
you know, wearing your heart onyour sleeve. He probably was like

(21:55):
that, except he wasn't a Hewasn't a sentimental man, but he was.
But he he did let you knowwhere he stood. He was always
about honesty. Yeah, my dad'sgonna my dad is going to get a
kick out of that when he listensto this part. Because I love you,
Dad, That one's for you.Well. And another thing was a

(22:22):
lot of people don't know about this. He didn't have any children of his
own. Oh okay, but butwhen he married Martha, she had two
children, and so the way ofwork back in those days, if the
father passed away, then the childrenhad the mother got equal shares. So

(22:48):
if you have two kids, there'sthree shares, one for one kid,
one from the second kid, andthe other one for the wife. So
when Washington married Martha, the onlypart of the first fortunate he had was
what was her share. But itwas a good step up for him.
He uh he went into the militarybecause he was not the first son.
You know, the first son getsthe property, gets the name, is

(23:11):
charge of carrying the name on.He was not the first son, so
basically that person has to make theirway out over they can. And he
was a surveyor and all that everybodyknows about. But he joined the army
because he saw it as a wayto prosper and he loved being in the
British army. Uh. Well,he was actually in the in the uh

(23:33):
colonial troops right for Virginia, andhe he took his uh responsibility to those
kids very very seriously. It's hisjob to be steward over those two shares
that belonged to the kids who werejust little kids at the time. So

(23:59):
he was really really tight with hismoney. And one thing that a lot
of people don't know is that evenafter the war with England, a lot
of the landed gentry in Virginia wouldstill work with a clearing house in England
to buy stuff. Is send hima note say, I want you to

(24:22):
get me a carriage. You knowhow much? Is it okay? Buy
one for me and send it tome here in the States. And so
there's a lot of evidence that Washingtonthought he was being cheated by those folks,
and he was. He was prettyadamant about letting him know that he
thought he was being cheated. Therecord, the official record, does not

(24:48):
show that there's no record or nothingto indicate that they ever cheated. It's
just that he was, you know, it was going to make sure he
wasn't cheated. So he took that. So he took his reputation that way.
He didn't want you. He considered, He considered a lot of hard
before going to the Constitutional Conference,because he knew that if he went there,

(25:15):
he would be lending his reputation andeverything to it, and if it
turned out badly, then that wouldbe a stain on his record. And
so he was a lot about proprietyand about being perceived as a gentleman,
as a very knowledgeable and educated gentleman. That's so that kind of paints a

(25:37):
picture a little bit on how youdeveloped his character. Did you take many,
if any creative liberties with creating Washington. Well, I guess, of
course he did take some creative libertieswith dialogue and whatnot. But what kind
of created liberties did you take withdepicting the seventeen eighties and or the lifestyles?

(26:03):
I tried not to take any.If I did, it's purely by
accident and my fault. I uh, you know, most of most of
the stuff you read about, youdon't you don't really hear about. You
don't hear about the personal side ofsome of these guys back then. And

(26:29):
a great example of what we knowand what we don't know, Washington.
Just like everybody else, they arethe paintings that we see. They probably
don't look more than just sort oflike the person really looked, because if
you were a painter back then,you got paid only if the person liked
the picture. Yes, same things. People will use the app if it

(26:52):
has the best filters, that's right, that's right. And so so somebody
painted his picture. I mean,we know he had smallpox when he was
young, and he has some scarson the on one side of his face,
and he always tried to favor notshowing that side in any picture or
anything. But it didn't matter becausewhen they painted him, they were not

(27:15):
going to show those cars anyway,So you know he might if he came
here today. You look at him, go, the guy looks familiar.
We've don't seen that guy before,you know. Uh, and uh,
it'd just be because we've seen allthese pictures. But all of the pictures,

(27:36):
if you've noticed all the pictures,look kind of different. Mm hmm.
I'm looking up right now because I'mkind of curious how tall he was,
and it's saying that he was sixto two and that is not just
tall for our current times, butthat is very tall for historical times.

(27:57):
Do you think it's that accurate ordo you think that's an embellishment. No,
I think it's accurate. I thinkit's accurate. He was known for
me just like Thomas Jefferson was knownfor being tall. I think he was
taller really, you know. Sothe average height for men in the seventeen
eighties was about five feet and teninches, So yeah, these Founding followers

(28:19):
were truly towering figures over their calrons. Yeah. I used to work with
a guy when I was at BellSouth. I worked with this guy and
he was six seven. Whenever hewanted to make a point at the conference
table. He would always manage forsome reason to stand up, and he

(28:41):
said, you'd be amazed. Imean, people will consider you a figure
of authority if you're big, andso he used it better than anybody I've
ever seen. I mean, henever did anything threatening. He just would
stand up at certain times, youknow, and say something and long or
outside stretched storms, you know,and just all encompassing. Plus he was

(29:04):
really smart, so that helped toowell. And that's kind of interesting because
I don't know what the exact statisticis that I'm not going to look it
up, but there is something tobe said for tallness. And I apologize
to all my short kings out therelistening, but this is just, you
know, this is just a thing. Most of our presidents are taller people,

(29:25):
and most CEOs and people in positionsof power do tend to be taller.
And for whatever reason, it isthat deep psychological reason that there's like
sort of that authority that they sortof evoke. So let's kind of start
to bring uh Washington into our modernworld. So he would look like you

(29:48):
just said, he would look likesomeone kind of familiar, maybe a little
bit different. He wouldn't be muchshorter than modern day people because historical people
were youually, a lot smaller.He probably wasn't very muscular because they weren't
nourished the same way as us.So he is just, you know,
kind of a tall, skinny guy. But bringing him kind of into our

(30:12):
modern world. What are kind ofsome of your more thoughts on on that
without giving way too much of thebook, Well, I think if you
can imagine, let's say, youknow, the only thing you know about

(30:33):
electricity is that your friend Ben hasbeen trying to capture lightning in a jar.
That's it, no applications, nothing, and there's no central heating or
his central air. And you bringthat guy to the present. So he
comes into what would be like agymnasium room, the uh, the lab

(31:00):
at the it's the hero lab.And I'll I do want to jump in
real quick to say, okay,HERO stands for a historical event research organization.
Just it comes from an act byCongress, and I intentionally made it
cringeworthy because I mean, you know, Congress is famous for naming stuff that

(31:26):
isn't what it is, you know, and so but they really really are
kind of heroes. You know,the lead character's Mark mcnight, so he's
kind of got knight in his name, and he's army Ranger, which if
you're a Lord of the Rings fanis also a night. A ranger is

(31:47):
a Knight. So there's there's alot of things there that we're working with.
But if he came into any roomand he goes, what's that sound?
You know, and we're like,what do you mean? And like,
you hear the hum from the lights, if you have that kind of
lighting, who would hear the airrushing through the through the duckwork in the

(32:14):
building, and you hear the humfrom the electronics. And so he's like,
what's all that because he's not usedto any of that. Modern world
is really noisy, right, andthen when you go outside, there's airplanes,
there's car noise, it's all kindsof things. I just thought,

(32:37):
you know what if he rides ina car and he's sitting looking out the
side window trying to see things andeverything's rushing by really really fast. My
oldest daughter, well both my daughtersused to get really sick in the car
looking out the window and tell herfinally figured out, tell him, don't
look at what's right there, lookat what's way over there, and because

(32:59):
they would get ill, you know, and so and I think my favorite
thing that I put it in oneof the books in that story was when
the President of the United States landsin h in Mount Vernon out on the
Bowling Green in a helicopter and yougot it. You know, if you've

(33:22):
ever heard one of those things,they really make a huge amount of racket
up close. And uh so youcan see him sitting in his his traditional
home of Mount Vernon and he hearssome huge, god awful racket. And
so that's another example of things.So I spent a lot of time with

(33:45):
that trying to figure out how to, you know, how to how would
Washington react to those things? Andthat's and that's like just so fascinating to
even think about, because you eventhink if modern if us right now we're
transported that far into the future,what kind of technologies are going to exist

(34:07):
that we can't even haunt, Like, we can't even conceptualize what they would
be like because we don't even havethat technology yet. It's like, what's
the equivalent of the of the electricitybreakthrough? It's like those future technologies might
seem like magic to us. Andthat's also you know, it's it's uh,
what is it compounding, it's exponential, So it's always going faster and

(34:27):
faster. Check in science fiction.But what about our politics. I'm really
curious to talk to you about thisbecause this is kind of the big premise
of the book, right, iswe have the politics that America was founded
on versus where politics are at now. So where uh So, how much
of it's similar and how much ofit's different. That's a great question,

(34:52):
so uh to give to give yourlisteners an idea that the premise of the
book is that the political divisions thatwe're seeing now don't get resolved. They
escalate, and they move further andfurther apart to the point that there's about
to be a civil war. Andthe president, Wade Harrison is the name.

(35:14):
He's just been elected president and twentythirty six. It's in early February,
so he's just been president a fewdays and he's looking for some way
to unite people, and he figuredthat he needed to find somebody that everybody
would listen to. And you know, I don't know about you. Can

(35:37):
you think of anybody now that peopleon the left and on the right would
listen to. I think it wouldneed to be a superman like alien who
came from planet Krypton who is anon partisan demi god that people would listen
to at this point, right,And so he had time travel and so

(35:57):
he thought, okay, let mesend a tea back to fire George Washington
and try to get him to comeforward look at what's happening today and then
make observations and you know, telleverybody what and and so he uh uh.
Two of the things he's really hesees, which you know, we

(36:21):
had no income tax back then.We didn't have income tax until the early
early nineteen hundreds, and so whenwe started having the income tax, I
mean, and they didn't want tohave a tax, because that's that's why
they split up from Great Britain.That's why they got a divorce, why
they threw the t in the ocean, right exactly. There's a series on

(36:42):
a new series on on Fox Nation, I think with Rob Low talking about
that it looks look, it looksreally interesting. So the long of the
short of it is he's going tosee several things. One, he's going
to see a media that no longertalks about the truth. It's well,

(37:06):
it's not everybody's truth. They talkabout they have an agenda. When I
was younger, you'd have the newson the news, straightforward on the super
board, and then you would havepolitical commentators after that. But it never
entered into the broadcasting the news broadcastit was. That was all just straight

(37:27):
arrow. But that's for example,there was a classic guy, Walter Cronkite,
who was a newscast for many yearsand you really couldn't tell if he
was a Democrat or Republican. Youhad no idea because he just gave the
news and that's it, you know. But today y'all gets mixed up.

(37:49):
And then one of the things thatI really am disappointed in that there's a
lot of Americans who are more interestedin and their political party than they are
their country. Yeah yeah, theirloyalty is their party, not their country.
And on both sides, right yeah, And back then the parties were

(38:12):
very different. We again, guys, I'm not a history buff, I'm
a sci fi person. So wehad the Quakers and the Democrats, right,
the Alicans came later, we didwe had oh my gosh, you
text my memory now, Oh no, this is what we're saying. They
had, They had federalists and antifederalists, and what that was about was

(38:37):
do we have a central leader,central hub that coordinates all the different states.
In the constitution, the last partof the constitution, uh says all
the other things are left to thestates. You know, it's not a
list of what the government is chargedto do. Is a list of limitations

(39:00):
on the government. This is whatthey can do and nothing more than this
and everything else left to the statesand so and the way it should be
anything that's or at least the wayI see it. If your strict constitutional
is then if it's not in theconstitution, then it should be managed by

(39:21):
the states. And we've gone waypast that. Of course they would One
of the things Washington would would notewould be the intrusiveness of the government today.
And he would he would know thatthe government has their figures and a
lot of stuff that they shouldn't beHistorically, what was the limitations of the

(39:45):
government that has changed from then tonow? Oh well, it was very
finally defined the ideas that the thelegislative body and the executive body and the
initial body were separate entities, andthey put them at odds to each other

(40:06):
on purpose, so that if onegets out of line, the other two
will snap them back in place.However, once political party becomes more important
than the than the country, thenyou see you see the three branches lining
up differently, and you know,you may have one branch that wants to

(40:30):
go too far and the other onethe people in another branch or of the
same political party. You say,oh yeah, let's say let's and if
they're not if they're they're not balancedwithin each each uh uh, each part
of the government, each third ofthe government. If they're not balanced,

(40:50):
then you're going to end up withbasically, for example, maybe the courts
and the uh and the legislative branchbeing in cahoots with each other. We
want to ram this through, somebody'sgoing to challenge it, and there's Supreme
Court is going to hold us up. I'm not It's good to support us,
is what I mean. Yeah,So, what I probably noticed right

(41:14):
away that we do have these verypolarizing parties that are at odds with each
other. And that was probably oneof the I have it. I have
all the books here with me.Again, guys, please check out these
books. They're so much fun.I got all four of them in the
series. They're not too hard toread. So again, if you have
read more books on your UH NewYear's Resolution list this year, please check

(41:37):
these out and we will be linkingwhere you can get them. And then
the other thing I was just inthe middle of saying something is I totally
lost my train of thought. Kim, go ahead, I do it all
the time. What I was gonnasay is, as I was reading The
Return of George Washington, that alsoso covers the writing how they did everything

(42:04):
with the Constitution and they had togo sell it to each of the states.
They did one thing that if theyhad not done it, it would
have never passed, and that iswithin them to a man, every one
of the founding fathers said, Okay, there are some things about this that
I don't like, but I'm notgoing to point that out. I'm just

(42:24):
going to say this is the bestwe can do, and I'm going to
try to get them to approve itbecause it's better than what we got now.
And so that's how they sold it. But there was infighting that you
would not believe. And I thoughtwhen I was reading, I thought,
Garling, this sounds like today.And it's true that, you know,

(42:45):
back then, they had people justas passionate, just as convinced they were
right, just as convinced that theyneeded something. As a matter of fact,
one of the first things that happenedwas there was a group of folks
wanted to do a carve out inthe constitution to give them special privileges.
You know, the Constitution is supposedto say everything applies to everybody, and

(43:07):
they and yeah, and they wantedthey wanted a carve out, but they
uh, and that's that's something Iwill say that Washington had slaves. A
lot of the founding fathers had slaves. There was no country in the world
that did not have slaves back then. And it's important to know. Some

(43:29):
people say that our country, youknow, was founded on slavery, but
what they're not taking into account iswe were the first country to abolish slavery
and then and what these guys didhelped it, right, these guys built
a platform that would facilitate it.Because there's automatically a question, well,

(43:52):
okay, all men, Hey,wait a minute, they got over there.
He's he's a man, but he'sblack. Why can't he But and
so it started all the conversation thatoviginally led to our civil war, and
then it was straightened out. Andthen when women got the vote, because
well, you know, shouldn't manbe a mean like humankind? If so,

(44:14):
why wouldn't women be able to vote? Oh, started that conversation and
it ended up being I'm sure toadd that it was the right thing.
It was a good thing, absolutely, and that was so that was something
interesting that you taught me earlier whenwe were talking before we started recording,
is I did not know this.So previously, when our country has founded,

(44:37):
you had to be a land ownerin order to be able to vote.
It wasn't just you know, itwasn't just men non slaves being able
to vote. You had brought alandowner specifically. So you know, even
interesting that George didn't have the firstborn son right to his lands. He
kind of got some of his initialwealth through Martha. And so that's interest

(45:00):
to me how things have changed andhow that original intention with you had to
own land in order to vote.The intention behind it was so that people
who were investing in their country wouldbe the ones making the voting decisions.
And now it's it's changed it's everyeverybody votes, well just not to but

(45:22):
everybody can vote. Yeah. Somepeople may look at that and say,
well, why landowners, you know, and I see that a little bit
differently. The reason they chose landownersbecause it was an easy way to discern
what they were looking for. Andbut today's standards, the idea is that

(45:44):
if you were a landowner, youyou kept a budget, you knew how
to handle money, you knew aboutborrowing money and getting paid back and that
kind of stuff, and you learnedabout investment. If you're not a landowner
like data day worker who just goesfor a paycheck, who doesn't invest anything.

(46:04):
Back in those days, they werewhen you get right down to it,
it wasn't they were looking for peoplewith money who owned a property.
They were looking for people who wereeducated, who understood what these things,
understood what the struggles were to makea country work. So I thought that
was you know, I used tothink, well, that's not land owners,

(46:28):
Well that's not that just that disenfranchisesthe poor. Yeah, I don't
have land, but it I'm alittle lineal i'mns have land for maybe ever,
right, But that really wasn't whatit was about. I don't.
In my opinion, it was theywere actually trying to make sure that people
voted were people who were educated atleast about money, so they would understand

(46:51):
how a country needs to work whereyou know, about bringing in money and
using that money to send it place. We're in the environment now right where
during the Revolutionary War, the armyserved almost without pay. They were promised

(47:12):
pay, and Congress, the ContinentalCongress, put levies out to all the
states. All the states were supposedto pay to help support the army.
They only a fraction of what itcosts was actually given to them. So
a lot of soldiers went without gettingpaid. They should have been paid.

(47:35):
They risked their life and everything,but they never got paid. And so
that so they were aware of that, right, so they're like, okay,
we got to make sure that weyou know, I'm sure that Washington
would have embraced a balanced budget forexample, you know, we don't spend
money, we don't have well andthat's and that's just the thing is,
it's you know, usually my episodesare focused on, you know, the

(48:00):
future, but it's like you can'tlook at the future without looking at the
past. And the cool thing isis humans are always We've always been humans,
and the way we've gone we've goneabout things or spoken about things.
Maybe our language is a little different. But the system that they were trying
to build in was a system ofcreating discernment. So with that said,

(48:22):
there's a lot of interesting I guess, so I can't say that word social
ideologies and the seventeen hundreds that arekind of explored in your book. What
are some of these ideologies or corepolitical beliefs that you think could really stand
the test of time and be applicableto our modern era. Maybe we have

(48:45):
to change some of the language aroundit, Like instead of being a landowner,
maybe you have to be a personof discernment. Like you kind of
get where I'm going here, rightright, yeah, I in today's world,
I don't know, this comes kindof like to your gut check,
right, your reality check. Butin today's world, it'd be really hard

(49:09):
to take voting rights away from somebodybecause because they're not very smart. Okay,
because they're not at all. Butbut there's I think the idea.
I can't remember if this was beforewe before we interviewed, or after,

(49:31):
but Washington, in his farewell addressfrom as President said, he said two
things. He said, beware politicalparties. We all know how that turned
out. And he also said anotherone that'd be really something to think about
today. He said, beware foreignforeign entanglements, you know, making alliances

(49:58):
that don't benefit our country. Andif you look at both of those things,
and he said, god, lead, does he have a time machine
himself that he could come for andsee that. Oh maybe maybe he did
come into the future and went backwith that in mind, right, Yeah,
but go ahead. I was justgonna say, so, with the

(50:22):
things that are going on today,here's the thought I wanted wanted to throw
out there. If George Washington camefrom seventeen eighty seven to the future and
to the twenty thirty sevens okay,and he gets killed or assassinated so he

(50:44):
doesn't go back to seventeen eighty seven, doesn't participate in the Constitution, it
likely doesn't pass. Then all thatwe have now is not what we're going
to end up with. So whatforeign powers would benefit by assassinating Washington?

(51:12):
Well, I could think of threeoff the top of my head. I
can think of Russia, I canthink of China, I can think of
Iran, that is book three andfour. Well, I think, yeah,
that part of the plot develops inthose books. Yet, so and

(51:34):
you know, there would be alot of people who were One of the
things I wrote down to think aboutwhile I was writing the book was,
Okay, who would not want GeorgeWashington to come and change the way we
do things? And I mean,I'm sure we have a ton of people
in government who like it where theyare to make a good money and they

(51:59):
don't want to give it up.And so what would they be afraid for
George Washington to say? And whatto what lenks would they go to prevent
him from succeeding? Now, there'sa lot of ideas there, you know.
I thought about organized crime and oppositionparty, whoever they may be,

(52:22):
and for those who wandered by politics, I try to stay away from from
positions of one side or the other. I just try to. I actually
talked about the the majority party inthe UH and the minority party. As
I talk about them, I don'tsay who they are. It's irrelevant.

(52:45):
There are bad actors all over theplace and with different philosophies of government,
and so who would not want himto succeed? So when I started thinking
about that. I thought, howwould how would they act act some of
these things? And and I wouldIf you want to see something interesting about

(53:09):
science, go look up google theJetson one and it is a car.
Remember George Jetson the cartoon with alittle flying car. So they developed a
a little car not a car,but it actually is a little flying car

(53:35):
with it's all electric and it hasfans like a drum. And it's a
one man deal, one person orone woman deal. Well, it carries
one person and it's a recreation recreationvehicle basically because you can go about thirty
minutes on one charge. You know, that's where they are today, but

(53:58):
they're working on it. And II took that and decided to use it
in the book. And then Isaid, you know, if I use
that, I'm going to get suedsomehow for something. So I changed the
name of it. But if youwant to see what I was looking at,
look at the Jetsum one. It'sremarkable. They have some great and
I think you can buy one forabout eighty grand. That's not on my

(54:22):
list right now, maybe later,So I don't know. I'm just now
just thinking about like flying cars like, we need to do an episode on
that. I keep thinking my Backto the Future car, but like Back
to the Future too, when itflies and it runs on garbage. Yeah,
that's that's the key, when it'srunning on gard That was pretty awesome.
That was pretty awesome. That wasa fun one, And you just

(54:45):
touched on why I went to thetwenty five year rule to twenty five year
multiple. The reason I went tothat was there's a scene in Back to
the Future where Marty mcflyigg says somethinglike a I don't know how I'm gonna
Oh wait, I have a timemachine. I could do anything I want.
I can fix anything I want.And that's exactly what I did not

(55:07):
want. I wanted some urgency.You know, you can only have so
many times you can go back andtry to fix something before it's too late.
So that's why I went with it. Oh and that's great, Yeah,
because I have always thought about that. It's like, man, if
you had a time machine, youcould you know, even if you need

(55:27):
to practice giving a presentation, it'slike you can practice giving it. It's
like, Okay, I didn't reallylike my delivery that way, Let's go
back in time. Let's redo itand we'll redo the wording, and it
just I think if you have likesort of like an unlimited use time like
free range time machine, it reallykind of eliminates that stress and pressure that

(55:49):
makes us human. And it's sortof like this Groundhog Day where you can
just make infinite mistakes and then nothingmatters. But that's not reality. That's
you know, I like the thereis urgency here. You know, Washington
does need to show up and preventus from this. You know, we're
on the precipice of another civil warhere in the twenty thirties, and you
know, by the time we airthis episode, it's we're going to be

(56:13):
in January. It's going to bean election year. And I know that
a lot of I have listeners allover the world, but I know a
lot of American audiences do get nervousaround this every four years, and a
lot of the rest of the worldsitting there holding their breath. So,
if we were to transport Washington orany of the Founding fathers here today,

(56:37):
what do you think would be someof their core values or intentions that they
would really want to communicate to modernday people to help kind of fix some
of our current political issues. Well, I think they would look at a
lot of the things we're doing todayand realize that government has seriously overstepped their

(57:00):
balance. They have uh back inthe history when they when they wrote the
constitution, then they had to gosell it to all the states to get
them to sign off on it beforethey could have a union. And uh
so one of the big problems thatother people had with it was they had

(57:24):
just had an oppressive government. Uhand they just threw that government off.
And that's why they had the Articlesof Confederation because it was much looser thing.
But the problem is it didn't itdidn't have the ability. Uh.
Number one. What one of thethings Washington was worried about is the articles

(57:49):
are not strong enough for us tobe able to field an army if we
have to defend ourselves agap uh youknow, uh, God forbid the Spanish,
the French, and and you knowabout fifteen years later, not fifteen,
about twenty five years later, wehad a war with England. And
so we would not have survived thatif they had not had a stronger government.

(58:13):
And the people were not interested inthat, so they made That's why
they made sure to make the Constitutiona list of things that the government that
the that the people will allow thegovernment to do. And and then the
last article says something about other Allother powers and laws are of the preview.

(58:37):
Purview, I think is the word, the purview of the states.
Does the states get to make thatdecision. That's for example, when Roe
versus Way got overturned, they didn'tsay it shouldn't be a law. They
said it's not in the constitution.The states need to make their decision about

(58:58):
that, which is exactly what's supposedto happen in the constitution. So so,
uh, you know, I whetherthat's the victory, a victory or
a defeat, you know, itdepends on your political persuasion and your thoughts
about abortion, right, But thatwas the decision really was the easy one

(59:20):
for although it was politically messy,it was an easy one to make because
not in the constitution, so thereforeit must be regulated by the state.
So we have we have fifty laboratoriesdemocratic laboratories out there that we use.
And when one state does something reallywell, then the other states see it.

(59:43):
Go that's a good idea. Isaw one good idea, and I
think it is Alaska who's picked itup is called I can't remember the exactly,
but it's about voting and instead whenyou you vote, no matter where
you are in the country, it'smanaged by the state, but you vote

(01:00:07):
for the top five people and yourecommend order. Right. So then when
they start scoring the election, theysee where everybody fits in. Everybody,
you know, who are all thefirst places. They just look at the
first places and just count all thoseand see where they land. Okay,

(01:00:29):
then the one that gets the leastvote is dropped out, and then they
look at the second choices of everybodyand add their vote see to the total,
and then again the lowest ones droppedout, So you end up with
someone who almost always know I thinkthey discerned that always they would get more

(01:00:52):
than fifty percent of the vote.And that's the big fight we have about
electoral college, right. So,uh uh so I read about that other
I went, oh, that's agood idea. Yeah, that's really interesting.
I'll have to look into that more. I'll try to find the link
and send it to you. Yeah, that'd be that. There's a really

(01:01:15):
interesting idea. So uh so thattakes the political parties out of it.
They don't they don't nominate. Imean, everybody who's running for president gets
to run. Everybody who qualifies torun gets to run. And then they
uh, you know, and thenyou score the top five and and and

(01:01:37):
you vote once for five people,your five choices. This guy interesting.
Yeah, so uh and I lookedat it. I went, what a
great idea, you know, Andit takes the it takes the electoral college
out of it. You know.Right now there's a big fight about people

(01:01:58):
who win the electoral college but don'twin the popular But that's happened four or
five times in the last ten elections. I think several times. I know,
Trump beat Hillary without without having amajority of the country. He had
fewer votes, but he uh,he took great care to go to all

(01:02:22):
the states, which she did notdo. And uh. And there are
other reasons too, of course.But and I think same thing happened to
somebody regionally. I can't remember whoit was. There was somebody you wouldn't
expect. Yeah. But but thewhole idea is that's why a lot of

(01:02:43):
people are saying, get rid ofthe uh, get rid of the electoral
college. But the electoral college isdesigned so that all the states have a
say, and uh they uh,you know, they have more representatives and
the bigger states. But if youif you take away the electoral college,

(01:03:09):
just go by by the just thevote count, then the big cities determine
who's the who's the president, andand you know, like I mean,
God blessed little North Dakota, right, they don't have that many they got
I think they got one representative andtwo senators, you know, and but

(01:03:34):
they got a lot of people therewho but not that many, but their
state would be impacted no matter who'spresident. So yeah, that was the
idea for the electoral college, andI think it's worked pretty well so far.
Yeah, Kim, this question areally interesting conversation. I definitely feel

(01:03:55):
like the wheels in my head areturning, and I feel like my curiosity
is being kind of peaked for meto learn more about history and politics.
I will openly admit these are notmy strong suits. I'm kind of like
a science and technology nerd. Butagain, I do not deserve to invest

(01:04:16):
my knowledge into science and technology ifI'm going to ignore history and politics,
because they are very intertwined and they'revery important to pay attention to. All
of them. We are getting closeto our reality check moment, but I
just want to ask you if there'sanything else that you wanted to add in
that you think is relevant to ourdiscussion or bringing your story to life before

(01:04:38):
we get to our reality check moment. Well, it's kind of a logistic
there. I wrote it as yousee, before I wrote four standalone novels.
I wrote this as a series becauseyou know, every time you journal
on the television, they're advertising someseries you know that they're doing, like
Reacher is the big one right now, and it's several different episodes that they

(01:05:02):
you know, put on weekly,you know, And so that I was
thinking what I'd like for somebody topick this up and make this a series,
And so I just kind of naturallytied them together and broke them up
that way. It was it wasa lot harder to do as a series
than I thought it was because they'renot stand alone. So if you wait

(01:05:28):
a long time between them, betweenreading them, then you lose the chain
of all the people. That's whyI put you know, a lot of
books have maybe ten characters all together. Well I've got dozens, uh,
and you can really nice what's itcalled in the beginning the cast and character,

(01:05:48):
so we refer to them, youknow, through the whole book,
which is really put. I putthat because I knew I didn't want to
leave anybody sitting there think who isthat now and start so, oh,
maybe it was one of in oneof the other books. Only go what
did I do with that book?You know? Oh, I loaned it

(01:06:08):
out. Oh no, And ifyou have the kindle edition, you can
just click their character name and it'llpop up with the box and remind you
of who they were. Or ifyou have a physical book, you can
just flip the first page and they'reall right there behind her right. And
so I think that as an author, I had a really good time doing

(01:06:30):
I learned a lot, and Ifeel I have the utmost respect for George
Washington at this point. And oneof my challenges, of course, that
I told you, was to makehim human and be a human man with
faults, but also treating him withthe respect he deserves. That was a

(01:06:50):
hard line to follow. I did. There is a there's one interview with
a member of the hostile press withGeorge Washington that I thought it took a
long time to write, but Ithink it's pretty well done. So we'll
see what happens. People hope people. I hope people will comment. I

(01:07:14):
hope they'll you know, do mea review and you know, loved it,
hated whatever, but just let meknow what you think, because I
learned more from that than I dofrom anything else. And I have a
couple of guys I can count ona couple of my readers that have read
all the books and they give themgood reviews, and they'll send me a
private messagecy i' found a typo onthis page, you know, also,

(01:07:39):
which I'm grateful. I go inand fix them, you know. Yeah.
No, I kind of feel similarwith YouTube. I have I have
positive comments there a wow, theseinterviews are so interesting, and I have
negative comments where people, uh,you know, they were expecting different content
and they're disappointed because they wanted morescience and less you know, science fiction,

(01:08:00):
or they wanted more fiction and lessscience. You know, it's it
can't it can't be perfect. Butyou know what is going to be perfect
is your reality check score. Sohere we go, miss the time.
So how likely would it be fora founding father to be able to rectify

(01:08:20):
modern problems in politics using our realitycheck score. You're up, Cana.
That's a really good question. Uh. Well, first, there's obvious say
that time travel has to exist.But the other thing is when you look
around today at the members are ofour government. Uh, it is my

(01:08:45):
humble opinion that way too many ofthem a concern with the political parties than
they are the actual thing of thegovernment. So I would see, I
would think that a founding father wouldhave an impact, but it wouldn't fix
all the problems, and it wouldn'tcome close. There would be a lot
of people who had come up tosay, for example, oh, yeah,

(01:09:08):
he's he's from two hundred years ago. He doesn't know, he doesn't
understand anything about modern stuff. Right, although a lot of the same rules
of of finance, all that kindof stuff, that's still valid rules.
But a lot of people talk aboutmodern modern money. Uh modern money theory,

(01:09:30):
that's the best way to say it. And uh and as all bs
that stuff doesn't change, it's stillthe same and uh so uh, I
mean you spend more money that didyou got Eventually there're gonna be consequences,
so I think, But I thinkthere's still people who would make excuses and
say not so I'm gonna say too, if you have if you have time

(01:09:57):
travel, assuming you have time travel, I'd say like two, they would
be able. Some people would listen. Some people who really wanted to know
and really wanted to understand would listento what he said and weigh at and
uh and then the act accordingly.But there are people out there now who

(01:10:19):
are entrenched in what they call thedeep state, And what they really are
is they're entrenched on not a particularparty, but keeping things like they are
for them because they found a wayto make a lot of money and be
comfortable, and you know, stroketheir ego like being a leader, being

(01:10:41):
in charge, being considered a greatthinker. They are invested in that.
Yeah, the opposite of the servantleader we talked about earlier. That's you
know, and that's just a reminderto all of us. You know,
if if even George Washington, ifwe had a machine and George Washington himself
could come back and talk to us, there would still be you know,

(01:11:05):
there'd be the naysayers and the negativity. And that's a reminder that the majority
of the change has to come fromus. And I'm chuckling because I always
get to this cheesy moment on theseshows where every single time I'm just like,
hey, guys, you know,changes up to us. It's in
our teachers to do their best jobtaking care of the children. It's in

(01:11:25):
the parents to instill good values.It's in the scientists to practice ethical science.
It's in right every single person's jobto do your best. And no
matter where you're at in this world, if you're a politician or if you
are a school a college student,you can still make an impact in the
sphere around you by being a good, virtuous person and taking care of the

(01:11:49):
people in your circle. And that'show we're really truly going to make change
because at the end of the day, like we don't have a time machine,
we can't travel to a different placeand fix things. All we can
do is fix what we have inthis present time. With what we have,

(01:12:10):
I could could have said it bettermyself. I'm going to go back
to this podcast or write some ofthat down. Thank you so much,
that man, good stef Thank you. So if people do want to buy
your book or of course you knowso authors. This is a big deal,
guys. I'm going to give Kima plug for him, so he
doesn't have to do it for himself. Reviews are a big deal because people

(01:12:31):
are not going to discover books likethis unless you write a review. If
you are listening to this and you'repart of a book club, try to
get your book involved in your bookclub. Talk to your local library.
Make sure that this book is atyour local library, because the fact of
the matter is that a lot ofauthors out there like Kim write beautiful masterpieces.

(01:12:53):
And I'm really enjoying this. It'swell written, the characters, it's
easy to read. It's a funsci fi. It's not as deep and
complex is something like done our hyperion, but it's not. I wouldn't say
it's like a young adult either.It's very well written, it's easy to
read, and it's relatable. Andwe're not going to get books like this
discovered unless I'm doing my cheesy thingagain, like we can do it,

(01:13:15):
guys, unless you people like youand I try and get more of these
smaller books, promote it. AndI think it's a great book, and
I would love for you guys toread it, write reviews on Goodreads,
Amazon, Kim, take it away. Where else can they find you or
your book? Well, mostly onAmazon, they could go to my website

(01:13:36):
and get more information. I havea section on myself which more I look
at, the more I think it'stoo much information, but I had I
actually made a couple of pages thatare not showing currently, but one was
about the names I used in thestory because all the names, almost all

(01:13:58):
of the names come from my path. There there people I admired, or
people I knew or whatever. Andmost of the places are places I have
been to. I've actually been therethat I got one scene in Finland where
I was there. I was thereas an excent. I worked for Eccentric

(01:14:20):
at the time, and I wason the job there in Finland, and
I thought this would be a goodplace for a story, you know,
and and I tucked it away andit was like ten years before I came
back to it. But but that, you know, just different places where
I've had stuff. In Virginia,you know, I've been to Mount Vernon

(01:14:40):
many times. Beautiful place. Itis a beautiful place. And my first
book takes place mostly inside of anoffice tower. And it was actually the
building that I used to be indata security for Bell South, and it
was the building the model for thebuilding is the old Sauce Center in downtown
Atlanta, and anybody who's been there. I mean, I was in the

(01:15:04):
security department for a while. Mostlymost of my career was as a programmer,
but they drafted me to help helpcatch hackers. And one of the
things I ended up doing a lotof times was doing security evaluations of different
places in the building. And somost of the places in the building are
places most people can't see, butwe saw it and uh and they were

(01:15:28):
perfect. I got all kinds ofideas walking around the building, look at
this stuff. Oh, that'd becool, you know, it's fun.
Thank you so much for giving usa window into your creative process. And
hopefully you can serve as an inspirationto others who were who are trying to
be creative themselves. And you cantake you know, you can take from
your surroundings in the world that youare living in right now. So thank

(01:15:51):
you so much for listening. Everybody. If you have anything that you would
have added to this conversation, Iknow it's political, so I'm sure all
all of you have a lot ofthat you would want to say, please
leave a comment and let us know. Until next time, everyone, thank
you for listening. To check thescience

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Time Patriot: What if Washington Was Here Now? | S01E09

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Time Patriot: What if Washington Was Here Now? | S01E09