>> there's a really great villains as well. >> henry the eighth stands out. the guy who married people live stands out. anyway, really good stories and thank you for writing it, i thank you for being with us today. nick? >> absolutely. >> everybody, the book is "dangerous ideas" and the author is eric berkowitz. thank you again judy for being in conversation tonight. it was a lovely conversation. we had excellent conversations and chat. thank everybody who showed up. it was an interesting discussion as well that happened in there that was very, very entertaining. i was glad to be part of it. if you'd like to purchase the book you can from book passage.com. the link has been posted in the chat. you can follow it there. if you happen to new live our store you can pick it up if you'd like itn even if you don't live nearit us we will ship anywhere in thed united states directly to your doorstep. in addition to that if you have

a local bookstore we really, really well not begrudge you if you purchase from them. we love all in these all across the country not just us although if you want to purchase or must we be very happy. again, if you enjoyed the conversation tonight please consider subscribing to the youtube channel. if you would join the conversation a little more, you can click the button and it helps the algorithm recommend our videos just a little bit faster to everybody else. thank you again when last time for showing up. "dangerous ideas", thanks again to eric and judy. i hads a great time. thank you for coming. we'll see you all again i hope very soon. ..

>> the world changed in an instant media com soared. we powered reality because we're built to keep you ahead. >> media com along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. walking from washington d.c. to new york city, former wall street journal reporter neil king reflects on his nearly 300 mile journey. >> doing it a year later with all that happened and all the things, shut in, all of us walking around behind masks, that long covid winter that was pretty horrific and the events we saw play out on january 6th at the capitol which i live right nearby, the contested

election, there's a lot of bad blood in the air overall so i made my desire to go out, i think it was the fifth day of spring and walk through a spring and see it unfold and hook-- look up closely and meeting along the way and trying to understand where we were as a country at the moment. >> neil king on his nearly 300 mile journey walking from washington d.c. to new york, on c-span's q & a. also find q & a interviews wherever you get your podcasts. and you're watching book tv on c-span2. well, if you're of a certain age, you have one of these on your shelves, a dictionary and you've probably looked up words in it throughout your lifetime, but if you're a little bit younger, chances are you've done a digitally.

well, mary french is trying to change that. she is the founder and director of something called the dictionary project. mary french, what are you trying to do? >> we want everyone to have the-- to be able to have a dictionary to enjoy the benefits of owning a dictionary and try to give them out when they're in the third grade so they get into the habit of looking up words, to spell them correctly and understand the meanings the words have and appreciate your rich language. >> what's the importance of having a physical book rather than just typing it in your phone? >> it's another tool for learning and i've been doing this for 25 years before ipads and iphones and the technology, technology is what drives the words that are in the dictionary, that's where the words come from so it's really

what holds us together as a society and really as a world, how we communicate and you have to be able to use different tools in order to access information. so, it's just another tool and at the young age, eight or nine, which is primarily the age we distribute these dictionaries to children in school, they're more op-- apt to learn from a book than a computer or an electronic device. they'll learn both ways, but it's more accessible to them wherever they go, and plus they own it. so, it just benefits them in many different ways. it has a lot of information in it. >> what's the importance of the third grade in this case? >> well, we -- when i started this, i tried second grade, fourth grade, and i tried everything and i even tried

instead of the dictionary and i found that third grade was the optimal age because at that point they're learning to read and then reading to learn. and so if you can encourage children and give them this tool, they have such an advantage in the sense of expanding their education and lessons. and it helps their school career. >> where did the idea for the dictionary project come from? >> this idea was annie's idea. she was the woman who dropped out of school in the 10th grade, and she understood the limits of her ability to earn money and understand the world around her and what people were saying because she'd dropped out of school. and when she was working as a crossing guard in savannah at

martin luther king exit off of 95, she saw that the children weren't bringing books back and forth to school and she asked them why and they said because they weren't allowed to take the books home from school. so she bought everybody a dictionary and told them to use them to help them because she didn't want their life opportunities to be, i guess, diminished because they didn't have a large vocabulary and she stamped in each book, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. and she passed out in savannah and she used to earn money from cleaning houses and i met her and i truly -- and i got to know that area when i got to know annie plummer and she died in 2000 so she really has had a

huge impact on people and it's a great idea to make sure that everybody has a dictionary. >> since 1995 when you founded the dictionary project along with arno french. how many dictionaries have gone out to children? >> over 33,700,000. >> how do you get them out there? >> this project short-term started out with writing grants and then i spoke to different organizations about this idea because they were intrigued with the idea of the dictionary and literacy so important and to keep people learning new words and basically from becoming illiterate in school. so they took it on as a literacy project and most of the current organizations like rotary, elks, kewanist, the

lions, they have to have a literacy program every year that they implement and it's an easy program to do and you get the best bang for your buck. you can reach the most people for the amount of money that it costs and it has a long-term impact. i've been doing this for 25 years, so children in the third grade, they've gone through college already who initially received dictionaries and people, you know, to see if they're still using dictionaries or people think that they're worthwhile. those children say that they still have their dictionary and they know where it is. not 100% of them, but, you know, when they asked -- they appreciated the gift and they still use it so for $2 or $3 it had an amazing impact on them, on their lives. >> so you have several different versions of the dictionaries you send out, but the front page on every one has

this. this dictionary belongs to: and you can write your name in there. why are there eight different versions? go green is one i have here. dictionary. and a student's dictionary. dictionary and thesaurus. a student's dictionary and animals here. why so many different versions? >> we wanted to show people-- when i first started this and i was writing grants, i was handing out books that i found at the dollar store and a lot of the teachers didn't like it because the -- it didn't have the words they were looking for in it and sometimes sample sentences and they thought that the sample sentences were too violent so we started looking at other options for the dictionaries. and i asked miriam webster to

create books for this program. so we-- and i created my own books on the student's dictionary and best students and the green dictionary i created along with my brother who died two years ago. and the animal, is my favorite because i believe in-- we need to do more to protect animals in our world and so i created that book to help children understand animals and there's a lot numbers in that particular book. and that was created by some students who were available in, i think they were only like 14 and 16, and their father wanted them to have a summer job so i had them help with that book. >> one of the things in the animal gazetteer, in the back you have each state listed and

i open to indiana and you have the population and some of the stats about the state, but then you, at the bottom, it's zoo locations. >> yes. >> and the children's zoo is listed there at the top. can anyone contribute to the dictionary project? >> yes. >> how do they do so? >> we have a website, dictionaryproject.org and they can call our office and we answer the phone and any way that you want to contribute or participate you have thousands of people who volunteer their time and get the schools the dictionaries for children. we're so proud of the work we do in our community. they do many things and this is just one thing that they do and they're very grateful for all that they're doing. >> and can anyone get the dictionary? >> absolutely. we get