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About this Episode
In this Golden Super Adventure Book, the villainous Doc Terror attempts to seize power by rigging a presidential election through bribery and high-tech sabotage. Operating from a hidden van, he uses a microwave beam to manipulate digital votes while his cyborg forces launch diversions across Washington, D.C. The Centurions—Ace McCloud, Jake Rockwell, and Max Ray—utilize their specialized Exoframes and weapon systems to neutralize the external robotic threats. In the final confrontation, the heroes use a makeup mirror to reflect a laser blast, successfully severing the villain's connection to the voting computers. Although the antagonists escape, the democratic process is preserved, and the fraudulent candidate is defeated at the polls.
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You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:
https://linktr.ee/storytime_for_kids
Produced by:
https://www.podcaistudio.com/
Transcript
Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.
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Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot
you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words.
When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder
know you can feel frustrated.
For Lauren even, like your efforts are futile.
And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people
only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine.
F***.
Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that.
And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free
at zippercruder.com slash zip.
With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations,
because we find the right people for your roles fast,
which is our absolute favorite effort.
In fact, four out of five employers who post
Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day.
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So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people,
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All right, we are going to look at a children's book today.
But this isn't your typical bedtime story
about fluffy bunnies or learning your ABCs.
Nope, this is a story about how
to rig a presidential election.
And here it is, Centurions Terror for President.
This came out in 1986 as part of the merchandise
for the cartoon Centurions.
And as you can probably tell from the cover,
things are getting a little chaotic in Washington, DC.
The whole plot is about a cyborg super villain
who figures the absolute easiest way to take over the world
is to get elected president of the United States,
through a whole lot of force and fraud.
I'm not kidding.
So just to be clear, this was a book aimed squarely at kids
that laid out a pretty detailed plan
for a violent insurrection to overturn an election.
To really get how wild this is,
we've got to walk through the plot.
You just have to see it to believe it.
Are you ready?
Let's read a story.
Our story begins by meeting our super duper heroes,
the Centurions.
Yay!
They're here to protect everybody in the whole wide world.
Here they are, our good guys, the Centurions.
They are so strong and so brave
and they always, always do the right thing.
One fights on the land, one in the sea,
and one in the air.
And look, they have a friend named Crystal
and she helps them from a big space station
way, way up in the sky.
Wooosh!
When there's trouble, she beams down their awesome armor.
And is that a monkey?
Yes, that's Lucy the orangutan
and she's a co-pilot.
How silly is that?
Oh, but every story with good guys
has to have a unnaughty bad guy.
And here he is.
His name is Doc Terror
and he has a very, very naughty plan
to take over the world.
Instead of using a giant laser, he says,
Maha, I'm going to become president
of the United States.
Can you believe that?
And he doesn't want to win by playing fair, oh no.
Doc Terror has a four-step naughty plan.
Number one, he's going to use a bribe
to get on the ballot.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Number two, he's going to make a great big distraction.
Number three, he's going to use sneaky microwave beams
to cheat the votes.
That's not fair.
And then number four, he thinks he'll become president.
Oh no!
But our heroes, the Centurions,
they found out about his sneaky plan.
One of them said, we can keep him from winning illegally.
So they got ready to go all the way to Washington, D.C.
to save the day.
And now it's the big day.
It's election day and it's time for the big fight.
Look out, the bad guy's plan is starting.
Up in the sky, parachutes open up, but uh oh,
they're naughty doom drones.
And on the water, the happy boats turn into
a big, mean invasion fleet.
And on the land, sneaky microwave vans
are trying to steal all the votes.
What a mess!
Power extreme.
Look, Ace gets his super cool sky-bolt armor
so he can fly and fight in the air.
Zoom.
Power extreme.
And Max jumps into the water, splash,
with his awesome green depth charger suit
to stop the naughty boats.
Power extreme.
And Jake gets his big, strong, detonator tank armor
to fight on the land.
Boom, he's gonna blast that naughty microwave dish.
And now they're inside the election's office.
Ace is so smart, he uses a little makeup mirror
to bounce a laser beam right back at the bad guys.
Zap.
And the bad guys fly away.
Bye bye, bad guys.
The Centurion saved the election.
Hooray!
Hooray for the Centurions.
Okay, all right, let's drop the storyteller voice
for a second here.
What on earth did we just read?
I mean, on the one hand, a fun story, right?
You've got heroes, villains, lasers.
But let's actually unpack the plot points
that were just served up to like a five-year-old in 1986.
So if we translate that little story into grown-up terms,
the villain doesn't just try to cheat,
he commits political bribery to even get on the ballot.
He doesn't just make a mess.
He organizes a widespread media distraction.
And the big fight is, well, it's a coordinated armed
insurrection against the US government,
all in service of hacking computerized vote totals.
And this is what's so fascinating.
On the surface for a child,
it's just an exciting adventure.
Good guys and cool armor, stop bad guys and cool robots.
But the narrative skeleton holding it all up
is just astonishingly dark.
The story, beat for beat, is about a violent,
multi-front assault on the US Capitol,
explicitly designed to fraudulently install a dictator
for kids.
And this brings us to the real question, doesn't it?
Why?
Why would you package these themes?
Political subversion, armed insurgency,
election fraud, into a colorful little adventure for kids?
To understand that, you have to look at the world
this book came from.
I mean, this wasn't created in a vacuum.
It was a product of its time.
And boy, does it ever reflect the anxieties of that time?
This book was published in the mid-1980s,
right in the thick of the Cold War.
There was this pervasive cultural anxiety about enemies,
both foreign and domestic, who might try
to subvert American democracy from within.
The whole idea of a powerful, technologically advanced enemy
trying to seize control of the government,
that wasn't just sci-fi.
It was a reflection of some very real world fears.
And these fears got boiled down, simplified,
and sold to children as heroes fighting cyborgs.
It kind of domesticates the terror.
That final line, I prefer to think
that he was defeated at the polls,
is just such a telling attempt to paper over all that violence
with a nice little civics lesson, which leads us
to the final and I think most critical question.
This book seems absurd to us now, right?
A bizarre artifact from a bygone era.
But it forces us to ask, what are the deep-seated anxieties
of our time?
And in what seemingly innocent cartoons, books, and games,
are we packaging them, simplifying them,
and selling them to the next generation?
What will they look back on and find just as strange
as a children's book about a violent coup?
Hey, it's Cole Swindle.
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Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot
you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words.
When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder
know you can feel frustrated.
For Lauren, even, like your efforts are futile.
And you can spend a fortune trying
to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates
who are just fine.
F***.
Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that.
And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free
at zippercruder.com slash zip.
With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations,
because we find the right people for your roles fast,
which is our absolute favorite F word.
In fact, four out of five employers
who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate
within the first day.
Fantastic.
So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people,
get ready to meet first rate talent.
Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip
to try Zippercruder for free.
Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip.
Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.
Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot
you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words.
When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know
you can feel frustrated for Lauren even,
like your efforts are futile.
And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people,
only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine.
F***.
Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that.
And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free
at zippercruder.com slash zip.
With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations
because we find the right people for your roles fast,
which is our absolute favorite F word.
In fact, four out of five employers
who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate
within the first day.
Fantastic.
So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people,
get ready to meet first rate talent.
Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip
to try Zippercruder for free.
Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip.
Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.
