they said you got to meet this guy, david goodwin. you got to shoot him an email. and so i did. i shot him an email, i said i want to learn more, what do you guys do? and he shot me tons of information. he had already done a lot of writing and research on this topic. and i kept reading it, and i'm reading it, i'm calling him. i call too much, on a regular basis. david, i got a question. can this really be true? is this true? at one point i remember looking at my wife, and i said, babe, she runs, by the way, a lot of the live stuff on "fox nation," and i said we got to make a movie out of this. people need to know what is going on from john dewey to the original pledge of allegiance, which we can get into that, to the bellamy salute, to what the progressives did, the whole story. and what david had done and the research he'd done, it was a no-brainer. so we got to work on the film. and then eventually the book. but none of this happened, none of this happened without david goodwin and the research and expertise he brings to the topic. [applause] >> now, i bet that just about ever

none of this happened without david goodwin and the research and expertise he brings. >> i bet everyone in the audience has some familiarity with critical race theory being taught in our nation's schools today. what i found fascinating in this book was right up front, the two of you make the point that that's just a very recent tip of the iceberg. this problem is really as much as 100 years old. one of you please explain that? >> it is. what is an amazing part of the story of the development of the book is we started march 2020. if you remember, that's before crt went front and center. before the george floyd riots and before covid. the interest early on was pete and i were thinking we want to tell the story of what was happening in the early part of the 20th century because nobody has told the story. as we went along, history was unfolding in front of us. pete coming back with he went about this -- what about this? i had this person on tv today and they said this. pretty soon, it was a truly collaborative project where pete was writing, he has written most parts of the book that deal w