Episode 253 – Connor Boyack of The Tuttle Twins (Part 1)

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this episode is brought to you by bull Johnson that’s right Travis bolt Johnson is running to represent the
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congressional district number seven in Minnesota and he would like your support if you want to find out more about his
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fight for liberty to be the next libertarian representative in Congress go to Bull Johnson for congress dot u s
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[Music] [Applause]
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[Music] [Applause]
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[Music] and now Matt Wright and Spike Cohen
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good morning good afternoon or good evening and welcome to the Vanguard for
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Spike Redbeard the pirate Cohen I am Matt Wright and together we are
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traversing the muddied Waters of Freedom first and foremost allow me to thank Justin for the kava that I’m drinking on
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this week’s episodes and allow me to thank libler for this delicious water
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well folks we we told you that this was
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going to be a really cool episode and it is we uh had a absolutely awesome
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conversation with one Connor boyak who is the author of The Tuttle twins series
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he’s the head of the Tuttle twins cartoon series uh he is uh the head of
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the was it libertas how do you say libertas The libertas
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Institute and he’s doing so much awesome stuff this was one of my this was was
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this our best interview that we ever did yes this was our best interview that we ever did and he was coming on in order
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to promote the book that he just authored uh it well it’s actually out
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now I I wrote upcoming but it is out now and it is America’s history a total
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twins series of stories years 12 15 to 1776 this is one of the
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greatest conversations that we have had with anybody on this program and
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um absolutely it was and if you want to get that book tuttletwins.com history
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that’s right totaltwins.com history it is available now please settle in and
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enjoy our interview with One Mr Connor boyak
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Connor Thank you for joining us today it’s always an honor having you on uh how was your how was your fourth of July
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it was really good I uh I went out to our family cabin I actually worked on one of our next Tuttle twins books
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um but I was feeling a bit of like a scrooge uh this Independence Day like I
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was talking to a few friends about it I I don’t know why this year more than other years past I felt less like
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celebrating it feels more like a memorializing of Independence to me than a celebration
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and so I was like looking around like all these people with their fireworks and their barbecue yay America yay
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freedom and I’m like where are you the other 364 days of the year to do anything about it so it yeah I don’t
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know I was feeling a bit scroogey I I I completely understand that like I
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the most of the places I hang out are filled with people who um hate Freedom
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uh and they you know they really enjoy the government boot
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um and you know I just don’t really like hang out with those people when I’m there I hang out with my little circle and like yesterday they were all like
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watching the fireworks and go Team America go go go and I was just
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like you guys hate Liberty uh why are you doing this
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you realize what we’re celebrating right like this is not secession shooting at government
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agents you know tax evasion yeah right yeah this was this was I believe this
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was it was a violent Act of treason uh in reaction to a proposed tax increase
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on one product how can the very people like ringing
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their hands over January 6th then you know celebrate the Fourth of July that that seems to me highly incongruent but
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then again because it wasn’t on the fourth of July it was on January 6th got it got it one day
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if they had waited
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yes so tell us what you’ve been up to you’re you’re founder and president of libertas Institute author of the tunnel
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twins series all sorts of stuff tell us all tell us about what you’ve been up to this past year so oh gosh uh brief
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version is you know I run libertas it’s a think tank uh we’re more of a dew tank so uh we come up with ways to change the
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laws and then we go get them actually changed a lot of people write white papers and you know hope that someone
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does something about it we’re a very strategic group so we we work at a state and local level
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we started in Utah which is my adopted home state I I was a California Exile
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before it was cool and uh and now we work across the country so we help groups all over the place get laws
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passed we’ve changed over 100 laws all kinds of stuff um and so that that’s kind of the bread
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and butter big part of what I do is run in this organization but then on the side and it sounds weird
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to say that because it’s become its own crazy animal like another full-time job but this Tuttle twins thing
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started as you know me and Elijah my my partner he’s the illustrator you know we just wanted to teach our
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kids these ideas and we wanted to you know I wanted my kids to understand what the heck dad does all day when he’s out fighting eminent domain civil asset
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forfeiture or whatever and uh and it’s just blown up I mean we’ve sold over four million books now we got a cartoon
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and a podcast and this you know game and um you know all kinds of books we
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translate them into a dozen languages like it’s just it’s really taking off as a way to help young people understand
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the ideas of Liberty and it’s a huge part now of what I do um from a very kind of like we’ve weaved
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it into like my full-time job and what our organization’s doing because there was like a huge void for anything like
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this before to talk to young people about these libertarian ideas and so we stepped in filled the void and now we’re
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blowing it up Way Beyond libertarian circles and and it’s just been a blast I know especially with this uh with the
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TV show you’re you’ve gone mainstream I love how you call it the Tuttle twins thing like you know that that’s the
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thing that I do called that’s awesome that thing I do yeah and like I’ve been
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a fan of the Tuttle Twin series since before I had kids um and I I bought like the first six
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books when they came in pack and I bought that that package of them and then when I ended up becoming a
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stepfather uh they destroyed those six and then I got the see that’s how we’ve
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sold 4 million this because the kids destroyed their first second basically they really do it’s only about 5 000
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people that have bought that place like 900 copies yeah and now I now I
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have the I think I have the full set I might be missing one um but I have the full set and I keep it
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in the office and if they want to read it I have to be there because I’m tired of them destroying them
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um but you have you have something new coming out and I’m actually I’m really excited about it my fiance soon to be
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wife is uh also very excited about it can you tell us a little bit about America’s history
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so two two and a half years ago two and a half years ago I was flown into
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Chicago to a donor’s office he brought together a bunch of groups like us that
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work on like K-12 or you know uh young people so fee was there the
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Bill of Rights Institute uh who else uh I think Young Americans for Liberty may
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have been there but just different like youth groups and and people trying to teach and this donor was really
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interested in how we’re teaching kids history and he’s like let’s work
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together let’s kind of coordinate look at the left they’ve got their you know critical race Theory and 1619 project
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and all these things so we meet the whole day we’re brainstorming nothing came of it
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and and that was a frustration for me because I felt like I was like trying to
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drive a lot of ideas yeah what if we did this yeah but uh I left I I flew home feeling like okay nothing’s really
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happening so I I mapped out on the little Delta napkin that gave me like a if I were to do something what would I
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do and so I got home I I bought I mean they’re sitting over here on my desk some of them these in fact for the video
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I’ll show folks I bought these like fat Social Studies books that poor like 10 year olds had to carry in their backpack
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and their they’ve got back problems from the age of 10 lugging these things around PTSD yeah right
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I thought everything was on iPads now I thought like they were just getting tablets to kids in order no man that the
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money the money’s in the textbooks because you release you know 87th Edition and changed two words and sell
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the new set to the school and so I flipped through all these books I came home I went on Amazon and eBay I buy all
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these textbooks where um there are teaching kids about the Constitution the Declaration the
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revolution all the things and I was like okay let’s see like how this is actually working and I get through all these
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books and I was maybe not shocked because I should have expected this but I was just blown away at how little
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these books go into any depth they they talk all about names and dates and when
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did this battle happen and who did what and they’re just like barraging you with minutia about history that I know young
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Conor detested I hated to learn enough stuff because there was no meaning there was no relevance to my life whatever
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these books completely fail when it com came to
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the ideas the philosophy John Locke the judeo-christian influence the Greco-Roman influence just the substance
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of like why these guys were doing what they did and so we set out to create our own book
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um that would do that that would not only teach the stuff that happened like who did what and when and why but but
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more importantly the ideas that motivated them and we say all the time this quote those who don’t learn from
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the past are doomed to repeat it right and yet we suck at teaching young kids how to learn from the past let alone
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adults we’re teaching that these books they’re teaching them about the past but
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that’s totally different from teaching kids to learn from the past and so
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that’s what our book is aimed to do is like here’s all these philosophical ideas and values and things that they
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were talking about that motivated them oh by the way those same ideas apply to our day here some ideas as to how and
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suddenly become history becomes more relevant than just this passing curiosity and memorizing names and day
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it’s now it’s more like hey they went through something kind of similar how did they handle that what did they say
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about it and maybe that can motivate me to know like what to do in in the world today to make a difference
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that’s awesome and no that’s yeah that’s awesome and so the books covers the span
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of 12 15 to 1776 so like 161 years I did
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that very 561 years
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math book yeah I was gonna say I went to Public School in Virginia so don’t blame
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me for my math um yeah the decimal point in the right spot right that’s true yeah he did give
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us a whole number yeah so I’m not looking for like spoilers obviously because it’s history but you
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pick 12 15 what happened in 12 15. you’re like this is this is where we’re
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starting this at so you know if you talk to Ron Swanson he says that nothing happened before
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177. history began right everything else was a mistake yeah exactly so if 1776
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was the birth of of America what was the gestation period and so we argue it was
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about 500 years because if you want to look at why colonization happen you have
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to understand why exploration why these guys were setting sail on these ships and going across the world what were
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they doing well they were looking for you know spices and resources and all kinds of stuff why and so they could
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take it back to trade well why were they trading well it’s largely the Silk Road and Marco Polo and these guys who were
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going out and bringing things across large distances and it was it was that explosion of free trade in the 12 and
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1300s that led to further exploration which led to colonization which led to America so we go clear back to talk
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about how the story of America is actually a story of trade and trying to make people’s lives better that drove
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lot of those things in the centuries ahead and then what’s with you know being very specific 12 15 is the year of
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the Magna Carta and so that was like the the proto-constitution like the early
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document that started to secure people’s rights that was an inspiration for later documents that followed this for us is
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volume one like we at least intend to do a volume two which is you know to be Ron Swanson uh continuing from 1776 the
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birth of America um when history actually started exactly and and your audience will like this I
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shared this with Tom Woods too but he was the first just the other day uh but I know your audience will like this too
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and and I should clarify this is tentative Elijah and I are still just kind of planning this but
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um the thinking is here’s volume one and it ends at 1776 so it’s birth of a
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revolution and then we’ll go 1776 for volume two 1776 through like 1789 and then that’ll
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be birth of a republic and then we’ll probably do 1789 through like the war between the states post
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reconstruction so that’ll be birth of nationalism when Abraham Lincoln is just
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like forcing the union and whatever and then we’ll go post reconstruction all the way through the Progressive Era
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World War One World War II I really want to end volume four with uh Dwight D
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Eisenhower’s Farewell Address warning people the military-industrial complex so that’ll be birth of the birth of an
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Empire will be uh volume four so the Republic of the Revolution the Republic
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uh the uh nationalism and then uh imperialism for volume four we’ll see if
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we stick to that but that’s the idea for now that’s very very yeah that is very
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very cool I like I like it a lot yeah that is cool I’m yeah I’m excited I’ve
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been uh I I knew about the book before we started emailing about you coming on the
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show and I’ve been excited for this book to come out for a while now um but uh yeah
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I have seen the history that’s being taught to second graders and it’s not right
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it’s not correct um to put that in a more clear sense it’s not correct they kind of gloss over
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things and they don’t say the full truths um as I have discovered uh with a second
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grader in the house so being able to be to sit down and show
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them exactly what uh how everything happened the real way it happened without the spend is going to be a it’s
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going to be a new experience that we are going to love in this house can I share a specific example just to
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kind of illustrate how this works so I’m holding that same uh book United States history by Holt McDougall uh this is a
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very popular uh textbook so I’m I’m looking at this uh book right now page
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96 and this whole fat book I mean it’s like
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gosh a thousand it’s a thousand pages it dedicates half a page
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to the French and Indian War and that that only a quarter of a page because for those who are watching the video
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version half of it’s a map over here yeah and then it’s got this uh tiny
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little chunk of text that talks about the French and Indian War well why does that matter the the French and Indian
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War and everything that was going on at the time is the only reason why the revolution happened right that the fact
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that the Redcoats went into so much debt and they felt like they were protecting the colonies but the colonies felt like
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no we shouldn’t have to pay for this which led to taxation without representation the fact that George Washington used to be a British Redcoat
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and he was a successful one at that and he would write these Tales of his adventures that people in England were
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like lapping up and so for them to realize later that that same guy was the guy now leading the Rebellion like
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there’s so much happening in the French and Indian War the fact that that what George like I’m not gonna give a spoiler
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we talked about this in the book but George Washington like he is the reason why the whole Revolution happened when
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he was a Redcoat and what he was doing for the Empire’s Holdings in his backyard he triggered the war by getting
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into an altercation that spilled into more Bloodshed which grew into the French and Indian War which led into the
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Revolution and George Washington said this book can spare only two paragraphs
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to talk about the entire French and Indian War and more importantly a it’s
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not interesting you read what it just gives a few like factoids about it but that’s not how we like history history
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is a story we like the Intrigue and we like the tension and the drama and the human element this book is completely
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devoid of that and so it’s it’s stuff like that where I’m like you know Matt for your you know second grader for
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everyone out there with their kids who are thinking about history I hated history I hated it because it was just
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all the memorization the pump and dump for a test of like I gotta crab my head full of this and oh now I can forget it
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and gosh it wasn’t until after college I started reading uh I think nullification
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by Tom Woods was one of my first history books that led me into you know reading all kinds of biographies and David
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mccola and Kevin goosman and all these guys wearing like history is actually fascinating when you when you read
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stories and not just the names and dates but I was deprived of all of that in school and as a result I was deprived of
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like the ideas and the way that it could be relevant to my life just because it was it was never taught that way exactly
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I remember in in public the difference between in public school how history was taught which I did not care about and
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then how it was taught when I was homeschooled by my dad which that was much more interesting and then later on
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in life when I started like watching The History Channel and things like that where it would present like a compelling Story the difference was night and day
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it’s why I know this was in the late 90s so I know everything there is to know about Hitler because for a very brief
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period of time the History Channel was basically just the Hitler Channel it was just everything yeah about Hitler it was
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all Hitler and so I knew every aspect of Hitler but it was because they actually had compelling stories as to how this
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happened and everything else so it’s awesome that you’re doing this because right now you know if you look at the
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what’s available in terms of what’s being taught to kids it’s either a very whitewashed version of American history
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that every year it just gets better than the year before or this like you know this version of History that’s critical
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but only on specific things and then goes to a really weird conclusion about what we should be now uh instead of just
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presenting the the history the facts and the history of how we got here and the fact that that includes that you know we
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went from being uh it’s almost like the Star Wars story like you go from being this Republic to being an Empire and
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that leads to the harm that we’re experiencing today as a result of it I think it’s fantastic what you’re doing yeah we’re happy about it it is
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absolutely amazing um to kind of switch gears a little bit but like education obviously
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since we can roughly say the 1970s has been going downhill um or at least staying
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yeah I wonder what happened what could have happened in the 70s
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I’ve been the Department of Education yes um ten points uh thank you so there’s
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been there’s been a lot of movements recently in like the school Choice Movement the the homeschooling movement
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um recently we saw that the Supreme there was the case in Maine
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um which if I was smarter I would have put the name of that in my notes here but uh
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where the bay Department of Education wasn’t allowing a Christian School to uh get the voucher funds but the Supreme
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Court said no you have to give them this option if they if they don’t have any other option
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um are you seeing these when as wins are you seeing them as delaying the inevitable
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that’s a good question so um the main case is a really interesting one
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um the the families it was uh Carson versus
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it wasn’t versus the state it was versus Macon I think I think yeah Carson versus Macon and
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um you know this is interesting because in a lot of states you have these they’re called Blaine amendments where
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you know over the decades they’ve had these uh I’ll call them litmus tests for you
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know sectarianism that you can’t use public uh funds uh tax dollars uh to for
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any religious school and to that I always kind of Snidely say you know show me a public school that isn’t a
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religious school it’s just a different religion you know statism and secularism or whatever but like what is religion
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ultimately but a belief system that’s Advanced is truth through propaganda right or wrong positive and virtuous or
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negative and you know hitler-like right like ultimately it’s the propagation of
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ideas and who claims those is true and so the public schools are these seminaries of learning for the you know
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statist religion and so why is it okay to force taxpayers to fund that rather than some other you know definition of
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Truth and um granted I think no taxpayer investment would be superior I think
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we’d all agree on that uh but to the extent that it exists then you know maybe we ought to not prop up Monopoly
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and and it’s indoctrination camps compared to what parents would prefer for their kids that would pull them out
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of these indoctrination camps into other you know Avenues of learning so to question Matt I I feel like this is
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inevitable I feel like the teachers union is really weak I think that unions in general are weak I think that we’re
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in a post-union era I think people have very literal tolerance for unions I know
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Biden and others like to lean into them but there’s there’s not a lot of love outside of kind of that core group of
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pro-union folks that are getting old and dying off I don’t really see young people really being enthralled with
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unions and the the idea of them so I feel like the teachers unions are waning I feel like the composition of the
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Supreme Court clearly is well positioned to knock down a lot of this stuff I think if you look at where the energy is
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in in kind of the school Choice Movement is the energy on the pro school choice side or is it on kind of the teachers
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unions and whatever I think the energy is way more heavily on the pro School
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Choice Movement side that’s where investment is that’s where energy and activism is
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um I think covet accelerated it you see all these I mean look at the school board meetings it’s all the angry soccer
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moms that are you know coming to tear the head off of the you know school board so I just feel like all those
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things are compounding and um I think there will be setbacks I think frankly I think there’s a lot of
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problems with school choice I think I think it’s not a utopian thing I think it does maybe invite a level of
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government regulation and there are ways to structure it better and be cautious of like so I don’t think it’s this
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utopian thing but on the net I think it’s way superior to the kind of uh
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degraded status of public schooling I think it’s going to serve and save kids
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and for that reason I think it’s worth putting effort into and I think that effort as we’ve seen with the Supreme
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Court ruling is going to be productive in the next few years to open up and online locked a lot of opportunities for
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kids that they would not have by going to their local neighborhood school and that degraded experience that it would
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afford yeah I I think that if you watch the and I agree with you 100 my concern
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long term right now it’s breaking up this the uh the public employee union Monopoly on schooling which is a
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fantastic thing I can see how this very easily becomes the Campbell Campbell’s
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nose Under the Tent for federal and state regulation of private schools through even if they don’t directly
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regulate but by them being de facto the largest uh customer of the uh of these
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private schools and charter schools of it becoming sort of a backdoor way of them regulating them the same way they
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do the public schools but that’s a longer term concern and in the meantime I like shout out to Corey DeAngelis and
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to you as well but to some of these these people these incredible school choice Advocates who are not just advocating for school choice but are
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doing it from the stand point of saying government’s not good at schooling and so you know if they’re going to take
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your money then it should go towards the school of your choice but we’d prefer that they just not take your money at
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all like you said so I like the way it’s being presented um and so even though I share the same
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concerns you do long term I think that this is being done as a step down to
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eventually just getting government uh out of schooling on on both the regulation and and
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um I guess Monopoly side but also on the funding side as well um and I agree with you 100 that the
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public employee unions especially are on their are on their their Death Rows uh
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the teachers unions are falling apart I’ve been to multiple uh police accountability rallies across the
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country where it’s mostly progressives there and they’re calling for stuff like abolishing police unions and meanwhile I
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agree with them but you would have never heard abolish police unions from anything even left of I I don’t know
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left of of Mitch McConnell uh which you know like any anything outside of the
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center right you would have never heard anyone calling for abolishing any kind of Public Employee Union so no I think
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they’re in their Death Rows and it’s a beautiful thing to watch and I think Spike there’s sorry Matt
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just to add very briefly I think there are ways to address those long-term concerns for example I’ve never really
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liked vouchers because a voucher is I get my 5 000 or whatever dollars and I
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give it to the private school and that creates a single Nexus in other words all the money flows to the school so
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it’s very tempting and logistically easy to regulate the school because they get the money whereas when you have things
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like they call them esas but like education savings accounts the Nexus is the parent and what that means is I
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might go swipe my card at Amazon for you know that fat textbook I held up that is awful I don’t recommend buying that one
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um or you know I might go to totaltwins.com and get their new history but I recommend getting that one
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um or like you know the field trip at the Museum or uh hiring a tutor or what
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like it becomes very decentralized and so there’s no easy way to regulate the school because the school might be there
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is no school in some cases it’s these first educational expenses so then it
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really becomes about the parent and so what what the best states I think are doing is it’s an audit system in other
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words you could right now you know when you file your taxes you could claim you know child tax credit your electric
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vehicle credit your whatever credits you claim them all right and you know you’re
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on scouts honor and whatever but you might get audited at some point to verify that what you claim yeah and so
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then it’s on the on your honor and maybe you’ll get audited and maybe you’ll get you know your hand slap and you’ll have to pay back money with interest but then
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it’s a way to have this hands-off approach to say we kind of trust you we’re going to have a presumption of
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trust that you’re going to claim credits the right way and then we’ll just audit you periodically to make sure everything’s on the up and up and that’s
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how I think we can address the long-term concerns where it’s very hard to regulate you know a school if the
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parents are using funds for all kinds of things that have nothing to do with a school which I think is increasingly the
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future of Education to move away from these Central School Systems even private schools and just say I’ve got my
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pandemic pod and my homeschool Co-op and my you know online Khan Academy and my
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whatever I think the decentralization of education is the future
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um even the modularization of it like my kids they’ll go take a class on outschool.com my kids learning how to
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how to draw uh anime and then in the afternoon he’s going to a local theater class and then you know like just I see
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that as the future it’s like our app economy right it’s like what I want exactly the way I want it when I want it
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how I want it and I feel like that’s where education is headed how soon I don’t know but that future excites me if
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you think this interview is going well so far wait till you see the second half which is even better it’s so much better
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that we’re only offering it to our subscribers and yes this is kind of statistic uh anchor dot fm money water
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slash subscribers uh no slash subscribe uh become a subscriber not only do you
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get access to the second half of this interview view but you get so much more content you get all sorts of money
30:21
Waters media subscriber exclusive content you get a discount at our stores
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and at partner stores and you also get an ad free listening experience on
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anchor and Spotify Matt what’s that book again uh the name of that book is
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America’s history a Tuttle twins series of stories years it covers the years uh
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12 15 to 1776. it’s like 245 pages long I was able to read a
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chapter of it and it is amazing it’s fantastic if you love the title twins
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stories you’re gonna love how he’s put this together uh you can go to tuttletwins.com
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history to order yours today uh and I I
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highly recommend it I’m order I ordered mine it’s supposed to be coming uh hopefully soon and uh I can’t wait to
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dive like I’m excited to dive into this book before my kids can yes before they
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destroy it because they’re kids and that’s what they do so check out you need to check
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out this next uh half of the interview it’s coming out this weekend we will see you then if you’re a subscriber if
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you’re not a subscriber we will see you next week but become a subscriber you definitely want to see the rest of this interview and where we’re going we don’t
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need roads
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[Music]
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thank you
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foreign