WTW89: PragerU Is Not a Grift and That Is Actually More Concerning.
Part 2 of 2. Now that we're Oklahoma-certified teachers, it's time to learn more about PragerU. Who are they, where does their money come from, and are they really going to be the new PBS? We break down one of their PragerU Kids videos, and end with a pretty unhinged video presented by a WTW frenemy. If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, everything, everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductious green M ⁇ M will now wear sneakers hello and welcome to where there's woke this is episode 89 i'm thomas that over there is lydia a prayer to you and a prayer to you i'm supposed to say a prayer to you too because this is the second episode i know i've got in like religious mode oh sorry hold on we want to do my full title oklahoma uh certified teacher thomas smith professor mr
smith everyone yes teaching PE.
I can teach math actually.
I can teach math or PE.
That's all I can do.
Yeah.
And all the gender questions that they throw at you during math.
Oh yeah, that's right.
All the subjects now are just who has a penis and who has a vagina.
That's the entire curriculum of red states.
So anyone could.
teach that.
That's easy.
Yeah.
Are you certified or is it just me?
I think you are too.
We are as a couple.
Yeah.
I think our whole show is certified.
Oh, I'm moving to Oklahoma.
Maybe our patrons are also certified.
Maybe that's one of the patron benefits.
I'll tell you, they all could easily be by going and taking the easiest fucking stupid nonsense test I've ever heard of.
Sorry.
We're moving on from that.
We are moving on.
What are we talking about today?
Today, we're going to talk about the second reason why I wanted to discuss Prager.
You and it involves our friends at the White House.
I don't have any friends at the White House.
Yeah.
I know.
Me ne neither.
Even in the best of days, I don't have any.
There's some particularly creepy reasons why we're going to be talking about that.
And then, of course, we have to dig into what PragerU is, who's behind it, the funding, the content, and debunking some of the videos that they have going on on their website.
So we got a lot to do today.
All right.
Well, I'm excited to get to it.
Hey, if people wanted to support the show and this kind of stuff, and, you know, as teachers, teachers' salaries, especially in Oklahoma, they're not much.
The meager bonus that Ryan Walters offered us to is $43.
We have to bring supplies and an entire classroom.
And apparently.
a curriculum because they don't give us one other than gender or whatever.
Well, we have the Prager U lesson plans we can download.
That's true.
Still, they should support us and where can they do that?
They can do that at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Thanks so much, wokies.
Is that our name for them?
Yeah, they're the wokies.
Thanks, wokies.
You guys are awesome.
They are awesome.
They're the best.
All right.
Well, after this break, we'll get to it.
Before we get deep, Oh.
And I'm going to warn you, it's fucking creepy.
Oh, creepy, huh?
Okay.
Yeah.
I was expecting...
Ugh.
Ugh.
I am John Adams.
So we get an AI John Adams.
The portrait of John Adams comes to life.
And then it comes, haunts your dreams.
It's in your closet right now when you go to sleep tonight.
Yeah.
Yeah, good thing this is the only reason we played this is because it's audio medium.
We don't.
Oh, this is the official White House, too.
Sorry if I might have.
I'm sorry if I might have spaced on that.
Yep.
Oh, they've turned comments off.
Oh my God.
Also, you can go through like there's a physical museum in the White House and you can scan the QR code while you're visiting portraits to then be- Yeah, literally like taken.
Get your free hand.
Possession of by these AI.
Okay, did we want to hear what this is?
It's just, it was that creepy.
Okay.
I want to watch that fucking horror movie transition again.
I know this is just for me, purely for me.
I know the listeners and nothing.
Oh, wow, yeah, that's scary.
I am John Adams, blunt, stubborn, and the indispensable voice for independence in the Continental Congress.
What is it called me obnoxious and disliked?
I call it telling the truth.
What was that accent?
If this is AI, they're all so bad.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, to be fair, I don't know that we know exactly what they would have sounded like at that precise time.
It's going to be some combination of like, they're not that far away from, you know, British accent, but that, that went into like Cockney for a second.
And then it was like Irish.
It's very strange.
I don't know what the computer thinks.
Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes or inclinations they cannot alter the state of facts.
In other words, friend, facts do not care.
I was literally just going to make the joke that he was going to say facts don't care.
I wish I didn't have the subtitles on because I still would have said it.
Yeah.
Jesus.
While Jefferson penned the declaration, I drove the debate, won the votes, and dared to speak when others hesitated.
I stood on principle.
even when it cost me popularity.
I never stood alone.
My Abigail, my conscience, my counselor, carried the burdens of hope while steadying my heart with her wisdom.
I became vice president then.
This is so fucking creepy.
You have to picture it's an AI face that's doing inappropriate uncanny valley expressions like micro expressions the whole time.
Yes.
When he says, the, hold on.
Conscience, my counselor, carried the burdens of home.
He says, Steady in my heart with her wisdom.
Oh my God.
He literally, the, well, he, I don't fucking, the algorithm, whatever this is, does eyebrows up like it's a, like a sexy times thing.
Yeah.
Like, I'm not even, picture, I know, sorry, it's audio.
Picture a fucking sentient painting talking to you.
AI, everybody.
Yeah, but worse.
And picture him doing an eyebrow raise when he says, my heart, what is something about the heart?
Carried the burdens of home while steadying my heart with her wisdom.
I became vice president.
Oh my God.
Are these the AI that people are falling in love with?
Patriot.
Yeah.
Now the charge is yours.
Guard liberty well.
But once lost, It is lost forever.
And then he goes back into his painting.
Craig, you.
Yeah, yeah.
So there's literally.
so many of these.
They have, you know, the women of the, you know, of the founders kind of thing, the founding women, it's Abigail Adams, Phyllis Wheatley, Dolly Madison, et cetera.
And then, yeah, just all the signers and stuff.
And this is interesting.
I want to read this fine print that I'm sure you saw.
The White House is grateful for the partnership with Prager U and the U.S. Department of Education in the production of this museum.
This partnership does not constitute or imply U.S. government or U.S. Department of Education endorsement of Prager U. CYA.
I guess.
Yeah.
I guess.
So have they figured out that PragerU is like so abundantly well-financed that like they figured out that this isn't really a grift.
It's just them trying to get ideology into government.
Like, is that what we think is going on here?
Because my first thing was like grift, but maybe they're just like, no, there's just a partnership.
It's free.
If Pepsi just decides to give stuff to the government, I guess it's fine or whatever, you know, is it that?
Yeah, I do think so.
There are a couple scholarly articles that look into PragerU specifically.
And one of them in particular titled The Kids Are Alt-Right, An Introduction to Prager University.
This came out in 2022 and the authors for this study, they argue that Prager U functions.
as a legitimizing hub for the far right in America that it cultivates a veneer of moderation and credibility.
They have so many presenters, but when the presenters go on for their videos, it's not like the Matt Walsh that you get on Daily Wire.
It's not the Jordan Peterson that you get with Jordan.
Oh, they launder their, they give them the they have a slightly better version, right?
The kind of tame version.
Exactly.
Dennis Prager is not like, he's not an Alex Jones, you know, like a raven lunatic.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
He wasn't last I heard him twenty years ago, I guess.
I don't know what the fuck, who knows now.
He speaks very calmly.
You know, his ideology is insane.
And we all know that being calm means you're right.
So to your point.
Yeah, their reputations get laundered.
And then when people get introduced to ideas through Prager, you, it's from seemingly now reasonable people who seem to know what sounds like they know what they're talking about, right?
With short shareable videos, you know, with animation that keeps your attention.
They partner with Daily Wire.
Horrifying AI that will haunt your dreams forever.
Yeah.
They even did like a mapping of all the different characters basically to show that Prager U unites all of the right-wing factions.
They have what they call the Reaganite neoliberals, the Bush era neoconservatives, the Tea Partiers, the Trumpists and the contemporary all right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
And then they're smart with platforms like YouTube.
They're smart with how they work social media.
They spend most of their money on marketing.
We'll talk about that in a bit.
But it ends up becoming this recommendation algorithm that you get sucked into.
And then eventually, you know, you like the sound of Ben Shapiro on that channel and maybe you're going to check out his other stuff too.
I think that's what it is.
They don't need money or lobbying favor even from the government, but it's about the gateway.
Well, that's terrifying.
It is terrifying.
In some ways, I'm like, I was almost more comfortable with a grift, you know?
This is like more scary.
Yeah.
Let's lighten it up a little bit because in the same way when we took the test, the ideological test and how stupid it is.
And then like when we're seeing this John Adams video and they literally have them say facts don't care about your feelings, the Ben Shapiro motto, right?
I think there are ways to combat this.
It's just, it's going to take a lot of energy.
And I had mentioned to you, I was like, man, we just need to go through these videos and like debunk their history and make some sort of series related to to that because let's get into one of their videos from a series for kids and this is particularly you've had a great john adams and it is yeah no scary job, Adams.
I'm just picturing like when you're trying to make your brand sticky, you know, it's like either you have a cool jingle or, oh, we can do a horrifying thing that will haunt someone's nightmares for the rest of their life.
And then they'll be like, Prager, you.
Prager, you kids did not start when Prager, you started.
Prager, you actually started back in 2009.
And it was Prager University Foundation.
They did a rebrand in around like 2015.
But Prager, you kids didn't start from what I can see until 2021.
And one of their content series that they've created is called Leo and Leila's History Adventures.
They have various categories leo has a penis and specifically yeah you know these are history videos quote history um and categories include u.s presidents science israel judeo christian values the bible so i history is very loose here yeah abraham from the bible and here's a history lesson about him so we are going to do the christopher columbus video awesome i've
been wanting to know what really happened and we're just going to do a snippet of this one and get into some of the facts that christopher columbus will share so what happened when you met the n native people who obviously discovered the land before you did?
The Indians?
The first people we met were great.
The Taino.
They were peaceful, curious, and really helpful.
I could tell right away that they were highly intelligent.
They even were able to quickly mimic everything we said to them.
I ordered my men to treat them well.
I'm sorry you paused.
I ordered my men to treat them well.
That's weird.
See, he ordered his people to not kill the other people.
Like, is that a thing you have to do if you're totally cool?
Yeah, so he took...
And then they were going to be helping convert other people when they came back.
There were slave raids that he launched in 1495.
He captured around 1600 Taino and then he took the 500, quote, best to ship to Spain.
The rest were distributed among the Spanish col crown publicly would like to issue these decrees and stuff saying like, you know, we're just really trying to promote the conversion, you know, of religion, but protect the natives, et cetera, et cetera.
Really?
They even bothered to say that back then?
Yeah, but then they said Columbus could treat the Taino as fit to be ordered about and made to work because they said that they were inferior and they were, you know, they were pagan.
Well, that sounds specifically the opposite of what this Elijah said.
Yeah, exactly.
He started a tribute system.
So they had to offer gold and cotton to Columbus and the Spanish colonists.
And if they didn't comply, he would do things like trigger warning, amputation of hands, ears, or noses, Spanish colonists, including Columbus himself.
There is some, you know, research to back this up, engaged in sexual abuse and violence against Taino women with pregnant women sometimes giving birth to children who were thrown to dogs.
This is horrible.
The Taino tried to fight back as much as they could.
They ended up killing 39 Spaniards at one of the settlements.
There were a lot of uprisings.
It was violent and awful and horrible.
And the plummet of the Taino population, they, you know,, like the 1490s.
And within a few decades, it was almost completely wiped out.
And it's widely recognized, the genocide of these people is widely recognized as a direct consequence of Columbus' actions and the policies that he established in that land.
And they're just going to say, they literally just said, you know, how wonderful the first people I met there were the Tainos and they, you know, learned our language and they were kind and helpful and I ordered my men to treat them well.
If you keep playing, then he's going to talk about who the antagonist is.
He never talks about like fighting with the Tainos ever.
That's interesting.
I'm sorry, Mr. Columbus, but I heard at school that you spoiled paradise and you brought slavery and murder to people.
Spoiled paradise?
I'm sorry.
That's what I read and heard in the book.
Nobody teaches.
Caramba.
Those are some accusations.
This is where they introduced Columbus' catchphrase.
It wasn't exactly a paradise of civilization and the native people were far from peaceful.
But you just said the Taino were peaceful.
They pretty much are.
But there are other tribes who aren't.
The Taino I had met had cuts and scars and bruises all over them.
I asked why, and they told me about the fact that they did that.?
Who are vicious warring cannibals?
Cannibals?
Like they eat people.
See?
Whoa.
Right?
Hey, all the things that are bad in the world I come from, jealousy, lying, murder, war, it all exists in the land I just found too.
Ah, in Europe we draw the line at things like eating people and human sacrifice.
Alright, pause.
Some of the neat things.
That is so, so real.
So, Caribbs, this is actually debated.
Columbus did say that they were cannibals, but there were other explorers who decidedly said they were not.
Right, yeah, because that' could be a fucking lie or it could be just like, again, deep xenophobia.
And look, I'm not going to get like everybody would have been xenophobic back then.
One thing I want to point out, I think it's really funny because this description of this video says, this animated episode explains why we honor Columbus and teaches elementary students not to judge events of the past by the standards of today.
What does that mean?
Because like it's dead.
It just says, no, he was great by the standards of today.
Yeah.
The point of the video is, no, he was awesome.
You know, it's kind of weird.
Why did you say that?
Why do you say not to judge by the standards of today?
Because it sounds like you're saying actually he was great by the standards of today.
Yeah, yeah.
There are some scholars who think that talking point basically that Caribs were cannibalizing people.
Yeah.
That they created it to justify killing and enslaving them.
Caribs, you know, like they were known as like a warrior tribe and battles happened and all that stuff happened.
But when the Tainos were being brutalized by the Spanish colonists, the Caribs allied with them.
Like they were often fighting alongside them, trying to get these European colonizers off of their land to leave them alone, to stop hurting them, to stop harming their families.
It's just such a terrible, terrible rumor that they are continuing to perpetuate.
Descendants of the Carib people have.
said right out this is an offensive myth so it's just i I had to stop because I can't not address that.
Well, and the thing, look, I'm no historian.
I just know that people are people everywhere.
I think that people on the left, I don't do this often, but I will actually go ahead and say like, I think maybe if people on the left talked about this a little differently, it might blunt this bullshit a little bit because I do think there's a tendency of people on the left to get carried away with the like, it was an idyllic land where everybody was peaceful and they also natives are magic and like a lot of stuff that.
It kind of gets into the like, I don't know where this is coming from.
Yeah, humans are always going to be humans.
Yeah, it's like that.
I'm sure it was very violent just like Europe was and, you know, just like everybody was.
But it's also like, it's interesting to think about why there's such a reaction to this.
Like, why are they so offended by judging history appropriately?
You know, there's nothing that rides on it.
That's what drives me nuts.
Way back when we did that fucking thing that launched this show with the asshole talking about presentism and like judging people of yesterday by today's standards.
Yeah, James Webb.
What is the function of that?
Like, I don't know if I'm explaining myself properly, but it's not like we're canceling Columbus.
Does that matter in any way?
Like, first off, yes, we should cancel Columbus.
Secondly, does that affect Columbus?
Like, I don't understand.
It's just looking at history realistically.
Yeah, exactly.
Looking at what it would be one thing if we were always taught this history with open eyes.
And some people are like, yeah, we think he's awesome.
And other people are like, no, we don't.
It's too.
But like, we're not even taught this.
This stupid fucking video is the exact opposite.
The kids should be like, really?
I was taught you were awesome and you shared corn with the Native Americans.
And then Columbus be like, oh, no.
I fucking killed and enslaved them.
Are you kidding me?
Wow.
What idiot?
What woke asshole taught you that?
Yeah.
I just want the history to be accurate because that's all it is.
Like, this is just whitewashing and they get so offended at the whitewashing.
I think there's nothing wrong with judging history by the standards of today.
Why?
I don't even understand why that would be a bad thing.
I think it also makes for like really interesting conversations.
When you're talking about an educational environment, you know, you could say like the country that we live in now might not have existed if it weren't for Columbus, but like we need to weigh that against the atrocities that were committed and the people that were impacted.
And, you know, what kind of decisions would you make in that situation?
And, you know, I just think that there's so many opportunity for really good teaching moments.
Well, I guess, but even that, I think, is more value laden than it even needs to be.
Like I don't know.
I wonder if that's where it comes from from with them where they, it's like, they can't envision teaching history without teaching about the great white men of history.
Like, they can't envision, because to me, history would just be like, okay, well, Columbus had this goal because he lived in a society and a time that wanted these things and also did not really value people who were different color than, you know, like, and like, therefore they did these things.
Like, you could just teach what it was, you know, and it's not, I don't think.
there's any point in trying to entertain, you know, the idea of like, well, this country wouldn't exist if it's like, why is even the point of that?
There isn't any ethical decision that we're making about that right now.
There's no judgment that matters about that.
There's no thing to be done about it if really what he did was fucking horrible.
You know, there's no, it's not like we shouldn't bear any guilt over that.
We didn't do it.
I think these people can't fathom history in a way that's just like not worshipping great white men.
Yeah, no, I agree with that.
Please continue playing because there's more.
So bad.
Yeah.
So, these people in your time who think it was a peaceful paradise are misinformed or lying.
Yeah, but what about slavery?
You didn't deny that.
Deny?
No.
Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world, even amongst the people I just left.
Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?
I don't see the problem.
Well, in our time, we view slavery as being evil and terrible.
Yeah.
Ah, magnifical.
That's wonderful.
I am glad humanity has reached such a time.
But you said you're from 500 years in the future?
So this is the Don't Judge Back.
And judge me by your standards from the 21st century.
You're still offended by these time travelers.
It's stupid though.
Are you calling me dumb?
Certainly not.
Wow, you nailed that.
Yeah, thank you.
smart young lady, but the idea of throwing away the past because of your present.
Yeah.
Listen, I love and am thankful for the ancient Greeks, but they did lots of things that here in 1493, I do not agree with.
They permitted lifestyles and worshiped gods that, as a Christian, I think is very bad.
Okay, pause.
That doesn't mean...
So good.
It equates slavery and like the actions that he committed against people, the murder, the rape, like these horrific things i had to say on the air like and he equates it to lifestyle choices of the ancient greeks because some of them were gay i had gay marriage or something and that they worshipped more than one god oh my god crazy hold on what are the kids doing in this stupid fucking cartoon that he's not doing there they're
just saying like yeah but slavery was wrong and he's saying Yeah.
Yeah, worshipping other gods is wrong.
Yeah.
What is the difference?
I don't understand.
It's just the celebration thing.
It's just that, I guess because he said like, oh, I revere them or something.
The setup to this was like, we want to learn more about you because some people have been talking about in our schools about, you know, that we shouldn't be celebrating you and it should be Indigenous People's Day, you know, instead.
That's why we get this.
If anything, sure.
There's one other thing in this piece that I do want to talk about, so please keep playing it.
So good.
I shouldn't respect and honor all the incredible and amazing things they did.
So really bad is based on the tiny living?
That is a great question.
I told you I knew what's my.
Some things are clearly bad.
Oh, not slavery.
But for other things, are you judge you must ask yourself what did the culture and society find i'm sorry what could be on that list that's that slavery is not like what yeah in what world is slavery not like the very worst fucking thing because slavery they're they're just going to pretend obviously that slavery meant oh no you're just instead of killing them we just took them on there's a butt they're kind of a buddy yeah you know and yeah they did some favors for
us they did some some chores no slavery at this time entitled rape and murder and torture and horrible things that's what slavery literally contains every worst moral thing you and is every worst moral thing you could possibly imagine.
But I love this so much.
Most things that we are not taught in school and like we're already learning.
Yeah, we were.
Like it's horrible.
It's like stuff I did not know about that I have seen as I was looking into this a little bit that we are learning a whitewashed version of slavery.
It's still like we're learning horrible things.
But even that is whitewashed.
Yeah, but the point is.
I love that like this is because they're anticipating the next point and they're so religious.
They're like, wait a minute, but morality can't be relative because one of their biggest things is that it has to be God given.
Yeah, God given.
And so he's like, oh, okay.
Yeah, no, smart.
Yep.
Here's my answer that some things are wrong no matter what like being like worshiping more than one god or being gay yeah but things like slavery rape and murder those it just depends on the time yeah yeah big deal Not everyone can time travel as you do and see that that's incredible.
I got I want to go hear that again.
This is so good.
All the incredible and amazing things.
So good and bad is based on the time you live in?
That is a great question.
I told you I knew you were smart.
Some things are clearly bad no matter when they happen.
But for other things, before you judge, you must ask yourself.
What did the culture and society of the time treat as no big deal?
Not everyone can find it.
Not everyone can see how normal becomes very not normal.
It is.
And so is life.
And history can be too.
If people in your time want to celebrate me for being a perfect hero, then they are very mistaken.
Only my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is perfect.
And I hope to spread his teaching to all the lands I find that are perfect.
If people in your time want to celebrate the guts I had to get this journey approved, start it, survive it, and get back to tell about it.
Well, that seems pretty good.
Yeah, it's what's that?
What is the celebrate?
That's the part I just cannot connect with.
And I realize it must be such a difference in mindset.
Think about how pathetic those accomplishments are that he's talking.
No, if they want to celebrate, I worked really hard to get the finances approved for this trip like okay like how many other accomplishments are there in history that are way more than that it's fine to again i nobody on the woke left is saying don't teach history yeah it's the exact opposite we want real history to be taught the problem is these assholes learned fake history and are and will never ever be convinced that they learned the fake history.
Here's another piece of the fake history.
At the beginning of the video, Christopher Columbus is telling his life story a little bit.
And he says that Europe was looking for a different trade route to Asia for the Silk Road because Muslims blocked the Silk Road.
Yeah, really?
Yeah.
That's funny.
That's not accurate.
Basically what happened was the various Islamic empires over the centuries acted as facilitators along the Silk Road between Europe and Asia.
But then once maritime exploration started to increase, Christians in Europe didn't want to have to work with Muslims anymore.
Yeah.
So then they were like, okay, Columbus, like find a different way for us to get to Asia so we don't have to work with these people that we don't like, that are different color than us, that worship different things than us.
But it's presented in this video that the bad, evil Muslims blocked the Silk Road.
And so they were unable to trade with Asia anymore.
Fucking.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's hilarious to think like.
Oh, man, those villains.
It's like, what were Christians doing back then?
Yeah, I know the cartoons that they do of them too are like, they're so gross.
Oh, really?
Yeah, let me see if I can find the timestamp for it.
This is incredible.
They actually do the.
Yeah.
Oh, there it is.
Oh, okay.
What is that supposed to be?
I don't know.
They just call them Muslims.
They don't specify like the empire.
Okay.
Who knows?
Maybe they know something I don't.
But this caricature you described, or I'll say this character, because I don't, I don't, I'm not a fucking historian.
Yeah.
It looks like a Mongolian guy with a samurai hat or a samurai helmet, doesn't it?
And like Genie.
But then he also has the Genie and the Simtar, you know, like the curved sword.
Yeah.
So that's like the Arabic thing.
And that's a Muslim.
Oh, those Muslims.
They just block the trade route because.
Yeah, just because.
Because of who they are and their dirty religion.
Do they teach about the crusades on Prager U?
You know, actually, I have a question.
They probably do, but like in a positive way.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So obviously this video has gotten a lot of flack.
You mentioned, you know, you had heard about this a while back.
Yeah, back when it came out.
It has gotten so much flack.
They actually have a section on their FAQ on the website about this video.
About here's why we're doubling and tripling down.
Yeah.
So the question is, what is Prager U's response to media criticism that Prager U kids minimizes slavery in cartoons featuring Frederick Douglass, which we did not watch, and Christopher Columbus and their response regarding the Christopher Columbus piece specifically?
This is a long response.
Yeah.
In another cartoon episode, Leo and Layla visit Christopher Columbus, who makes the following statement.
Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world.
Dot, dot, dot.
I don't see the problem.
Critics on the left seem to dislike the way Columbus speaks about slavery in this cartoon, but had he condemned it, that would have been inaccurate.
Slavery was commonplace from the dawn of history until centuries after Columbus' death.
From his perspective, it was just the way the world worked.
Prager U never minimizes the evils of slavery.
Our critics choose to either ignore or lie about Prager U's condemnation of slavery as an awful part of American history in these cartoons and many other people pieces of content.
While some paraphrasing is useful for relaying complex ideas to a young audience, PragerU is meticulous about thoroughly researching the facts, clearly representing accurate history and offering important age appropriate context, something that is sorely lacking in the contemporary teaching of history.
Based on the backlash we receive, it is evident that our critics do not hold themselves to the same standards.
I mean, we just spent a lot of time talking about various problems in that video.
Not just about slavery.
They are very inaccurate.
Very, very inaccurate.
And here, this answer, they think that they're 100%% representing the fact that it does minimize slavery, but it does minimize slavery.
Especially when you look at like that they excluded that Columbus and other Spanish colonists that, you know, came over because of his efforts enslaved Taino people.
And it only ever says that the Taino people were nice and that the bad Karibs were the ones harming them.
And so they had to stay to protect the nice, intelligent Tainos.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's incredible.
Insane.
I want to talk a little bit about, you know, I mentioned I don't think this is grift.
I want to talk a little bit about the structure of Prager U. It is a 501C3.
So we're looking at a nonprofit organization that's not supposed to participate in political activities.
It was founded in 2009.
And just in case anyone is curious, NOIT is not an academic institution.
It is not accredited.
You cannot get a degree from there.
They started as Prager University Foundation, and then, as I mentioned, rebranded to PragerU.
They consider themselves- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's Prager University Foundation.
Not a university.
It was started by Alan Estrin and Dennis Prager.
Alan Estrin is a name I haven't really heard at all.
Like when you hear Prager U, you think of Dennis Prager because he's the namesake.
Alan Estrin is a key, key, key part of this.
They have this document Yeah, yeah.
From what I understand, like they were on, I don't know how Alan and Dennis knew each other, but they like were on a cruise.
Yeah, a cruise in like the Indian Ocean, I think is what they say.
And they were talking about how they would love to do, uh, you know, videos to to teach about different things that are happening in the world and, you know, hey, do you like bullshit whitewashed history?
Yeah, I love it.
Do I?
So Alan Estrin, one reason why, you know, this was something that was, um, exciting for him is he was a screenwriter and like really he was actually a screenwriter.
He wrote episodes of Boston Public, Touched by an Angel, The Practice.
He also co-wrote Pocahontas 2 with his brother, Mark.
He lectures at the American Film Institute or he did.
I don't know if he still does specifically for screenwriting and he originally envisioned.ed Prager U to be like a brick and mortar type university, but then they decided to switch to short videos online.
Lean on the internet.
He credits Jeremy Boring, formerly of the Daily Wire, I like that I get to say formerly, with helping to develop the animation style that they use in their videos.
And then Dennis Prager, conservative talk radio host, had been doing it for a very, very, very long time, decades.
Some just quick little comments here.
He has been a fierce advocate for Jews all over the world and has done a lot of work to protect the Jewish people and like some, some I think really important work early in his career for that.
But in 1994., the Anti-Defamation League issued a report about anti-Semitism in the Christian right movement.
And he went after the ADL as a result and said that conservative Jews should be open to working with the Christian right regardless of the anti-Semitism because that doesn't actually matter to him anymore.
That was 1994.
Oh, wow.
That's crazy.
Oh, that was back when the ADL didn't sub?
Yes, yes.
When they were calling out anti-Semitism from the Christian right and saying like, this is a problem.
We're seeing this in this movement, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, this guy fucking won that argument.
Yeah, he issued an attack on them because of that.
He has all the views you'd expect, very anti-LGBTQ, anti-Affordable Care Act, anti-Muslim.
He was anti-Trump.
He said that he was his 17th choice out of 17 candidates, but he endorsed him anyway.
He said that those who didn't get vaccinated against COVID were being treated worse than gay men and drug users during the AIDS crisis.
So this is a serious person.
Interestingly, his brother is a physician and a professor at Columbia, and his brother is ProVax, anti-hydroxychloroquine, like it's kind of a, you know, opposite side for a lot of things.
He has a son named David who pops up in Prager U financial documents Sometimes there were some issues there with money moving between the organizations that was not disclosed to have his son affiliated with it.
And they got in trouble for that.
We haven't seen much of him at all lately because he fell in November of last year and had a serious back injury.
So they say and he's still recovering from it.
How old was this guy?
Is he like an old guy?
Yeah, he's 77.
So he's up there.
Now, those were the two founders and it was just them for some time.
And then they brought on Marissa Street, who I said is the CEO fairly early.
I want to say it was like 2011, 2012 when she joined.
But they have been like, unless you dig into.
like IRS records and their financial documents, they don't make finding their organizational structure very easy to find online anymore.
So they used to have an advisory board page, like a board of directors that was available.
It's now only available on Wayback.
And I think...
They had, you know, a couple executives from this company called Wedgewood Incorporated, which is a real estate company that buys foreclosed houses at auctions.
And then Attorney General Bonta of California in 2021 found them to have engaged in illeglegal practices to get the houses flipped within weeks, sometimes days, like they were throwing out tenants, not providing utility services, filing false declarations to support their evictions.
There was like a big standoff that they had in Oakland.
They were basically kicking out people and making them homeless that were squatting in this abandoned building.
And they were like mothers and stuff with their kids.
And that really blew up.
But more interestingly, Charlie Kirk was serving on the board at the time for Prager U of Turning Point USA.
And Ginny Thomas.
Oh, God, really?
Yeah, Ginny Thomas.
So they are not on the board of directors anymore.
But as I said, they really don't want the majority of the public poking around their website to find it.
You can still get it from the IRS filings, but that's basically it.
They were initially funded by Dan and Ferris Wilkes, who were hydraulic fracturing billionaires, the Bradley Foundation, you know, a lot like fracking.
Yeah, fracking.
The Bradley Foundation.
Millionaires.
The Morgan Family Foundation, but also other entities like the National Christian Foundation, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.
Their funding, it's disgusting how much it skyrocketed in 2015.
So, you know, this is around the time of their rebrand that I mentioned when they went from Prager University Foundation to Prager U. They got a new logo.
They were updating their website, et cetera, et cetera.
They went from their total revenue was $3.6 million and net assets at $3.5 million is what they reported in 2015.
In 2023, their total revenue was $68.7 million and their net assets grew to $93 million.
That's eight years.
They went from $3.6 million in revenue to $68.7 million and it continues to grow.
In revenue.
So wait, what does their revenue from?
Is it from donations or is that from like, I don't know, somehow money they make selling these fucking videos?
It's donations.
They do not sell their videos.
All of them are made available for free.
Do they make anything on like YouTube or anything?
I guess it would be kind of insignificant.
They might monetize.
Yeah, I'm not sure on YouTube, but they've also run into a lot of issues with YouTube when years ago they had a number of their movies were set to restricted and there was a lawsuit about it.
They ended up losing the lawsuit and YouTube won because YouTube didn't have to platform their content was the finding.
But Dennis Prager spoke in front of Congress.
Ted Cruz invited him and he got to rant about how they're being censored.
And actually, I have his speech handy.
Yet Google, which owns YouTube, has restricted access to 56 of our 325 minute videos and to other videos we produce.
Restricted means that families that have a filter to avoid pornography and violence cannot see that video.
That's not just the only thing.
It also means that no school or library can show that video.
Google has even restricted access to a video on the Ten Commandments.
Yes, the Ten Commandments.
We have repeatedly asked Google why our videos are restricted.
No explanation is ever given.
But of course we know why because they come from a conservative perspective.
Liberals and conservatives differ on many issues, but they have always agreed that free speech must be preserved.
While the left has never supported free speech, liberals always have.
I therefore appeal to liberals to join us in fighting on behalf of America.
I really see the truth of that statement nowadays with a fucking literal ideology test, an ideological test to be a teacher.
Otherwise, I promise you one day you will say, first they came after conservatives and I said nothing and then they came after me.
It was fucking sweet.
God, I loved it.
It was my favorite day.
Yep.
No, the they is always conservatives, you fucking idiot.
Yeah.
It's like saying first they came after the came for the fascists like no that's who's doing the come that's the they yeah but um primarily i mean their funding comes from individual donations um and then their spending is almost all on marketing like they have found that that is where it makes sense to spend their money because they want these things to be spread.
They want these things to be pushed.
They're doing like these marketing materials and collaborations, et cetera, et cetera.
And they've created more content too.
From their website, it says that they have 100 million views of their kids shows, 1,300 pieces.
of content.
They're an approved educational resource in 10 states.
Now, Florida was the first state to partner with them in 2023.
And the way that it works in Florida is it's not clear that.
any classroom is using them.
They are allowed to.
No one is being mandated to use them.
Yes, that's something.
Yeah, but they are like, because they're an approved vendor, you can get reimbursed for any materials you buy from them to support your lesson plans.
But the lesson plans are free.
I can download the lesson plans and the worksheets that they hand out to kids on their website, like for every single video.
And some of those are pretty remarkable too.
So not only do they have stepping into the educational sphere within these states and they have Prager UKids, they also have podcasts, documentaries, they have a book club video series with Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire.
They work very closely with the Daily Wire.
They have a ton of five minute videos.
That's that was like their bread and butter, you know?
And I have one that I want us to watch a little bit later so we can get a taste of that.
But not only do they have content like that, they also have something called Prager Force.
And Prager Force is that's their Gestapo that kills people that beats teachers that teach the woke stuff.
It is an international student organization to promote Prager U videos and ideology.
Jesus Christ.
And there's a data point in 2020, 6,500 high school and college students were promoting their videos.
So when we talk about things like campus reform and other entities like that that are utilizing students in universities to help amplify the conservative voice because they are being attacked, because they are being drowned out, because no one wants them.
Prager U is an element of that too.
Those fucking whiny babies.
Yeah.
They also have published a parent action guide to help get Prager U in classrooms and then also like offer tips and tools and tricks and forms to fight against other curriculum.
So I have that whole PDF there.
It is remarkable.
I spoke about one of the scholarly articles that I was looking at in researching for this.
There's another case study by McCarthy and Brewer in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture.
This is titled Hegemony of the Right, a Prager University case study.
And they said that Prager U has fundamental overlapping ideologies to the extreme right.
And they went through and detailed the methods of persuasion that Prager U uses where they combine in a way to reflect information that under these like persuasion techniques that are similarly used on online platforms by white supremacists when they're trying to hide racist propaganda behind like professional looking websites, being very mindful of what language you use.
And also, you know, like as we talked about, mindful of the way that you present the information with you as a person, as a presenter, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
And oh, who did they have?
Who's the Project Veritas guy?
James O'Keefe.
Yeah, he does a video for them.
Wow.
Yeah.
He's like, oh, I also make propagandistic bullshit live videos.
We should work together.
Yeah.
So James O'Keefe's video with Prager U is one of the five minute videos, American Media Soviet Tactics.
James O'Keefe exposes why trust in modern journalism is declining, revealing the need for factual reporting.
What a joke.
The other pieces of that article were understanding how Prager U intertwines Judeo-Christian morality with national identity.
In a lot of their videos, they basically create this narrative that says American morality is inseparable from Judeo-Christian values.
And so if you reject those values.
No, watch me do it right now.
I separated it.
So if you reject those values, it's not that you just like think differently, but it means that you're rejecting what it means to be American.
A lot of videos talk about capitalism as morally virtuous.
It's the moral imperative.
It's aligned with the Protestant work ethic.
Anything related to socialism, they are.
portrayed as lazy and undermining societal contribution.
They have this ridiculous video I watched in Prager, you kids about like Vivi in Venezuela and talking about like the horrors that she experiences in Venezuela and how it can all be tied to the socialism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that if they didn't do that, then things would have been better in Venezuela because it's a beautiful country and they just needed to lean on their oil production.
And then they also found that they say that conservative values, that's just being a patriot.
And so conservative is the moral and patriotic choice.
They often use war metaphors.
So saying like that, you must fight for American values, that it's the cultural front lines and that these are the ideological battles.
We are victims all the time.
Et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
Now, when I mentioned though that nothing is mandated in these states and the same with Oklahoma, like Oklahoma's partnering with PragerU, the nation in 2023 ran a piece where it said that of the biggest school districts in Oklahoma, none of them were going to be implementing PragerU curriculum as, you know, required in their classrooms kind of thing.
But I think there's a couple reasons why.
it is a big deal even though it's not being mandated in the classroom it honestly comes down to the battle over public education and i think we can see that with their anti-union messaging as well but from the nation and like their evaluation of this uh they say, founder Dennis Prager has long been open about the fact that his aim is to indoctrinate kids into right-wing ideas.
And what he says is like, yeah, we have doctrines we're trying to share with kids.
We're indoctrinating them.
Yeah.
Okay.
So stupid.
One five-minute video at a time.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But he's taking away any sort of the connotation of it, right?
When we say indoctrinating, it usually has a negative connotation.
And so he's just like.
He's being very.
Yeah, I think he's just being very obtuse.
In reality, however, very few students will encounter the Prager U videos denying the link between fossil fuels and climate change or depicting abolitionist Frederick Douglassass justifying slavery.
In New Hampshire, for instance, students can now complete Prager U's courses through the state's Learn Everywhere program, which lets entities other than schools grant academic credit.
But Learn Everywhere has been an unmitigated flop.
Of the state's 162,000 public school students, just 32 have signed up for the program.
So there is some good news.
Yeah.
But then they go on to say, in other words, if the goal of right-wing politicians is to push Prager U into K through 12 classrooms, they're failing miserably.
But Prager U is only one small part of a much larger political project.
Conservative leaders aren't trying to force students into Prager U courses.
Instead, they're prying open the gates for an entire army of partisan curriculum developers to come marching through our public schools.
They talk a lot about how to opt out of things, right?
They're really just trying to dismantle.
Like the regular school, like the actual school.
Yeah.
And they really are just trying to dismantle the public education system by encouraging parents to opt out by offering these different things, by being anti union, by saying, you know, it's parents' rights, parents' choice.
And then now what are you going to have?
You're going to have this weird system of like parents trying to create their own curriculum for their kids within the public education system that doesn't work.
So then the public education system fails.
Yeah, they want to kill public education by design.
Yeah.
So I just think there's insidiousness there with regard to the public education system and PragerU's involvement there.
But then also, as we talked about, like PragerU does serve as a hub for all of these different conservative factions.
And I want us to watch this particular video.
We don't have to watch all of it, but we'll get the flavor for it, because as you are exposed to some of this stuff, they're very smart with their YouTube channel and they create, you know, playlists and what they call marathons where they just put a bunch of their videos together with like a thematic element.
And so you end up, you know, going down that rabbit hole of YouTube and getting pulled and sucked into the algorithm, and maybe you'll experience a video like the one I just sent you.
In the first half of the 19th century, 10 million blacks worked as slaves imprisoned on plantations in the American South.
They were prevented from learning how to read, their families were forcibly broken up, and if they tried to escape, they were severely and brutally punished.
The owners of these plantations were almost without exception, Democrats.
Before the Civil War, slave-owning Democrats used black bodies to massively increase the number of votes they got in Congress and the Electoral College.
Because of the Three-Fifths Compromise, a single Democrat in Georgia who owned five slaves got four times the representation of Democrats as a single white abolitionist in Pennsylvania who didn't own any.
So for Democrats, it has always been about using black bodies for political power.
How they are used may vary, but the plantation model remains a constant.
even today.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Despite the fact that blacks are no longer enslaved, many black children barely learn to read in poorly performing schools.
Why is that?
Our families are often shattered by misguided welfare policies, and if we try to escape, we still face punishment.
Oh, really?
Of course, the plantations of the 21st century are not physical.
They are virtual.
They are the woke left.
The owners of these plantations are once again, almost without exception, Democrats.
They're private fucking prisons that are run by Republicans.
What today are certain areas of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia all run for decades.
decades by democrats but virtual plantations.
Many who live in these areas are largely, if not totally, dependent on their masters, the politicians, for their food, housing, and health care.
It's hardly a fair exchange.
Oh my God.
Politicians become wealthy.
The residents become vote slaves, sustained just fairly by government transfer.
And just like the plantations of yesteryear, which demanded a consistent breakdown of the black family to reinforce its system of buying and selling slaves, Democrats today incentivize similar family corrosion through their policies, fostering dependence not on mom and dad.
but on the government.
To give just one example, virtually every inner city school provides free breakfast and lunch.
Sounds generous.
Oh my God.
Yet many do break free from this oppressive system.
Like the fugitive slave Frederick Douglass once did.
They run toward a better life.
But leaving the plantation still entails great risk.
Of course, today it's not the whip or the lash.
It's libel and slander.
The purpose is to bring black conservatives within an inch of their professional and sometimes personal lives a warning that rebellion will not be tolerated.
Is that slander?
Yeah.
Don't believe it?
Here we go.
Just ask Dr. Ben Carson, Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Oh, yeah.
Where is he?
He's dead.
Oh, he's a Supreme Court Justice.
Carson, one of the most celebrated brain surgeons of the modern era, has been called stupid by the legacy media because he has conservative political views.
Sorry.
Is that like?
Oh, so wait.
Oh, OK.
I thought it was saying like when they try to break free, then they get like accused of libel.
because I truly didn't think about how stupid this was yeah so they're saying the tools we have are saying mean things saying mean things if if a black person dares person did to Supreme Court Justice Clarice Thomas.
I don't even know what he does for a living anymore.
Oh, he's still in the Supreme Court and he still makes a bunch of money and Harlan Crowe still gives him tons of money and private jet trips.
Yeah.
We don't have to finish it, but that's amazing.
Yeah.
So you can end up on a place like that.
And, you know, they just have, they have so much content in their annual report or maybe it was from one of the videos I watched on Marissa Street.
They do 40 pieces of content a week.
Jesus.
A week.
It's crazy.
You look at their website.
It is just, it is to the best of all.
It's almost as much as we do.
It feels incredibly overwhelming.
They have a man on the street video series where someone walks around and just does that kind of segment.
They obviously already have a couple videos talking about the school shooter in Minneapolis and really focusing this.
This one's called trans terrorism in Minneapolis, just horrible, horrible things, but they have this infrastructure and these people who are just so incredibly driven by such hateful things that It feels a little insurmountable, honestly, but I think we have to try.
And so that's kind of why I was like, I just, I want to at least focus in on the kids stuff maybe and like help break apart some of those things.
I don't know.
Man, it's crazy.
Yeah.
So that's Prager you.
Oh boy.
I pray or you didn't.
Yeah.
Oh God.
Prager you, pardon?
I didn't think of anything better during that.
I was actually just really just entranced by this horrific crap.
Yeah.
There's honestly, there's so much.
Oh, there's this commencement speech that Ben Shapiro does that's remarkable.
It's, it's just, I mean, some of these things are just funny and full of things to debunk.
You know, you thought your woke indoctrination at college was over now that you're graduating but sorry you're going to be exposed to the woke in corporations and DEI and blah blah blah like even in the New York Times this person was fired because they innocently used the N-word in relation to this like story and I was like there's no way and so I looked it up and obviously it took me two seconds and I was like oh that's completely false he said it to a student there was this group trip and someone said that someone got in trouble for using the N-word and
then he responds oh they got in trouble for saying and then he says it And yeah, and that's just the beginning of my research on that.
It was like, okay, Ben Shapiro, you liar.
But yeah, there's so much here.
I imagine we'll probably have some opening arguments opportunities here too with Vapid Response Wednesdays.
They really like to go after immigration on this stuff.
So yeah, lots more of PragerU probably to come.
But hopefully people feel like this was a good primer.
How's your certificate coming?
Do we have?
Oh, let me see if I got it.
Print that bad boy out.
I gotta frame it.
Yeah, let me see.
So proud of my accomplishments.
Here is your certificate.
Yes.
View certificate.
Oh my gosh.
I can add it to my LinkedIn profile.
can share my award i can share it on my social media wow and my credential verification.
I have an ID with this.
Oh my God.
And I have a check mark.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
This is serious.
This is like, I mean, it's like, okay, download.
Well, if anyone wants to forge this certification, I can include this and you can just type over my stuff.
We need a woke university one.
Like, can you imagine what our test would be like?
Yeah.
Real actual facts.
Oh man.
That'd be fun.
I did appreciate that I got to explore history and I got to explore some of these various claims.
I mean, like when you're looking at the right.
Yes.
Yeah.
When I was researching when I was like, there's no way.
And so I appreciated this set of episodes for that, for sure, because I did learn a lot and I'm feeling like eager to do it again, honestly.
Like you heard me, I could quote that Christopher Columbus video, Estupido.
Like I did that perfectly in time.
It was.
It was.
Yeah.
I didn't, folks, there was no audio manipulation.
Yeah.
No manipulation of anything.
That was, that was a foley and that was in the moment.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm kind of looking forward to doing more of these things and maybe feeling like I'm working towards having an impact here because I think it's pretty bad that there hasn't been a lot of really focused pushback on the stuff that Prager used doing.
Well, I'm off to go see someone to get our house dehaunted from the John Adams.
John Adams.
Who notably said, Facts don't care about your feelings.
