Sunday Fireside Chat | The Founding of PragerU w/Allen Estrin

Life Audio.

Hey there, this is Marissa Streit. I am the CEO of PragerU, and you are about to listen to a special edition of Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager. Those of us here at PragerU are continuing to do the very important work that we've been doing with him for over 10 years. We are educating millions of young people online. We have state partnerships to bring our content into schools and so much more. You can head over to prageru.com to see the progress that we've been making. Also, I'd love to invite you to support our mission by donating to our 501. It is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible donation will go to an institution of higher learning that actually shares your values. So enjoy your podcast and thank you so much for all your support.

Yeah, put that— now you look like a unicorn. That's good. I hope this is being— this should be recorded. Okay, good, good. Here, here.

Oh, wait a minute, I'm rolling. It's got to go under the neck, under the chin.

Okay.

Yeah, he's definitely sillier than me.

Yeah, one second, Ellen. No, just one second. No, it's inconceivable. If he wore it, everybody would think the whole world would collapse. It would. The stock market would sink. And I'll say that Okay, ready? Speeding. Hi everybody, you're probably wondering why is Dennis wearing this dunce hat. It's not a dunce hat, a party hat. And the answer is right here, episode 100, the 100th fireside chat. So it's a big deal. I normally would not wear this, but basically Megan, who was the unofficial producer of the fireside chat, asked me to do so. She asked my colleague, friend, and co-founder to do it, but as he pointed out, he, he didn't do it when he was 5. He's certainly not going to do it now that he's 25. So I've done it, and happy birthday anniversary to us at Fireside Chat. I'm Dennis Prager. This is my home. Otto is busy today, and we— you all know Otto by now, but this is very special. It's the 100th one. So I figured, why don't you meet the person who actually came up with the idea of PragerU? It was not my idea, I always make that known. I, I, I— the idea of taking credit for something I didn't do actually repulses me. I am, I'm a big believer you give credit where it is due. Alan Estrin, who was my friend for 30 years, very dear close friend, Dennis Prager is the one, and producer of my radio show for many years, is the person who came up with the idea. And Alan is known to many of you who know my radio show as the Living Martyr. It's a funny nickname that he actually developed on his own, but it was so fitting, it's really— it stayed. And how many years ago, it was on a listener cruise, I've been taking cruises with my listeners for now about 25 years, and from Antarctica to the North Sea, I mean, literally all over the world, every continent. On one of those cruises, what happened?

Two friends of ours on the cruise approached me and they said, "We should start a Prager University." Let's do something along the lines of Hillsdale. Let's, let's create a new place where Dennis's values can be taught. And I thought about it for a bit, did a little research, came to the conclusion that it would probably cost us about $250 million to get started, take 10 years to build a building, maybe After that time, we'd have 1,000 students graduating. I didn't want to take that— make that much effort, take that much time. But I had another idea that I had been percolating about that sort of came together when they made this point about a university, which I like the idea of doing something educational. At that, this was now I think 2009, 2010, I thought, let's, how about if we do, we really make use of the internet. Let's create something on the internet. So then I started researching what they had, people had been doing educationally on the internet. And mostly what people were doing was they, there were educational places, but it was a professor standing in front of a blackboard talking for an hour. And I knew that's not how people are consuming the internet. It's certainly not how young people are consuming the internet. That dovetailed with the idea that you have a special gift of being able to distill complex ideas into a short coherent time frame. So then I started thinking about, well, let's make short videos, put those on the internet. How long should those videos be? And the, the 5-minute idea came to me very quickly. Just seemed— 7 minutes just felt too long, 3 minutes wasn't enough. 5 is a nice number, solid number, let's just do 5-minute videos. And I went back to these same guys and I said, look, what you want is gonna cost $200 million. I don't think you wanna spend that kind of money or raise that kind of money. How about some seed money? $20,000. And they said, okay, let's do it, let's try it. And they gave us the money and we went— when we got back to Los Angeles, this was months later, we made our first few videos, which you actually ad-libbed. There were no scripts. That's a whole nother process that developed.

That's right, I ad-libbed. And I remember the first Middle East one.

Yeah, it was ad-libbed.

So let's go to the actual— by the way, a lot of this is is, I can't say new to me, but I don't remember it. So it's new to me for all intents and purposes. So in effect, really, it was some, two other people's idea.

The idea of a university was Ron Lee and our dear friend, the late, may he rest in peace, Carl Bowman.

That's right.

They had the idea of a university. So yeah, you could give them credit for that.

No, no, no, that's fine. Of course it's yours, but That—

no, no, they definitely use the word Universal.

Yeah, I got you. So you came over to me on the ship.

Yeah, correct.

That I do remember.

Yes. And then— and what were we playing? Hearts.

Yes. Which, it's amazing you didn't say it during hearts because I, I don't allow anything to intrude on beating you. With one of the goals of my life is to win at hearts at every, every time. So You must have said it right before or after the game. And then so my reaction, as I remember, was fine. And that was it. I didn't— I don't— I didn't get excited.

I think you were intrigued by the idea, but there was no sense of—

Right.

Let's— let's absolutely— we have to do it. Let's start thinking.

Now, I say to everybody, if someone had said to me in the beginning, you'll have a million views a year. I would have said, from your mouth to God's ears. I would have not believed it was going to happen. How optimistic were you that something like that could happen?

You know, I— it's a— that's actually a tough question for me. It raises a bigger issue. I never think— I really don't think ahead.

Right. I'm with you. I know it sounds correct.

How many views was it going to get?

I didn't even know what you need to do.

Yeah, I didn't even have a sense of what, what was a lot of views. If you had said to me, uh, this video gets 10,000 views, at that point I probably said, wow, 10,000 people saw it, that's, that's, that's, that's a good start. When the, the Middle East, the first one we did, the Middle East problem got 100,000 views.

Right.

I thought that was beyond belief.

Right.

I used to say that, that like 25— in the early days, 25,000 views was a single, 50 was a, was a double, 100,000 was a grand slam home run in the bottom of the 9th.

For those of you outside of the United States, these are baseball terms.

Oh yeah, that's right.

There are a lot of people watching outside. That would be like somebody for us, you using cricket to describe something. Anyway, it was a home run.

And to this day, I don't, I don't think about what's it going to be like in 5.

Right.

We have, we have, we have a deadline. We have to do something tomorrow. We have a job to do tomorrow.

That's right. That's exactly right. I live that way. You know what, Megan, I'd like to talk about that because people are told a lot. Think where you're going to be 5 years from now. I've never thought where I'll be 5 years from now in my life. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, but that was, that was it. I didn't know where I would be in 5 years, and it didn't matter. What mattered is, am I doing something worthwhile now? And this was worthwhile. So we started it and we put out— it wasn't every week.

No, initially it was, it was like every 6 weeks. I mean, we were just trying to test the market. We had no, no regular pattern. It wouldn't even be like every 6 weeks. It would be 1 week, 4 weeks, 14 weeks.

What was the first one? Was it mine on the Middle East?

The Middle East problem was the first one.

Oh, interesting, which is which was redone with a script.

Yeah.

Even though the ad-libbed one worked out well. But first of all, most people aren't going to be able to ad-lib, so it wouldn't have worked. It was not, it was not a pattern that we could have kept.

No, and we knew it wouldn't work when you decided that we couldn't ad-lib these things because—

right, even though I ad-lib well, even very, very well, right?

Better than anybody. But we—

it has to be written.

We made a determination.

Every word has to be carefully chosen.

Because it's 5 minutes.

That's right. And permanent.

Every word has to count.

And permanent. Exactly right. So now we have a billion views a year and we're also in something else we would not have anticipated. We're We're in a very big battle for free speech on the internet. I mean, I have come to realize this battle is so much bigger than PragerU. If Google can do what it wants to do, the conduit of all information practically in the free world, is stymieing us. They put another 100 of ours on the restricted list and that was just because they're angry at us.

Yeah, it's very difficult, I think, for people to grasp how big this lawsuit is. If we lose, then Google, Facebook, Twitter truly have a blank check to do whatever they want. They will have— there will be— the courts will say, we're putting no restraints on you, you have nothing to fear.

Well, there was only one solution after that, which I never even entertained, and it only hit me now, and that is that Congress would have to pass some sort of law, uh, maybe break up a monopoly. But the, the threat to free speech in America is, is the greatest in American history. That, and neither you nor I engage in hyperbole. That's, that's how serious it is. So I think people would be interested as well to know of our relationship. So it's, it's, we, we met, I think we can actually virtually date the month because you were asked to write a script by David Zucker, the great director in Hollywood who, who he and his brother did Airplane, which is one of the classic films.

I want to correct, just, that's accurate, but we, I, and I, and I know we both feel this, I want to give credit to Rich Markey.

Good, please.

Because Rich, who was working with David Zucker at that time as a, as his producer, he was the one who approached me because Rich and I were working on a script for Disney at the time. It was actually a funny idea having to do with the origin of the Marx Brothers. And he told me that he and David wanted to do an educational video with you, and he asked me if I was interested. At that point, in my writing career, I had made the decision that I would not do any writing at all unless I was paid. It was just kind of a blanket— because I'd done things and, and not been paid and didn't work out, and I just thought, I gotta be paid or I'm not, I'm not doing it.

He's a professional screenwriter. That's his profession. Okay, go on.

So I said, uh, who is, who is this guy? So he tells me—

oh, you did not know?

I knew who you were. I had just started listening to you.

What year is this?

This is 1991. And the whole backstory of how I started listening to you is a whole nother story. And Rich tells me that, that he and David want to do a project with Dennis Prager. And I said And he couldn't pay me, you know, I said, "What, what, what, are you gonna pay me anything?" "No, we don't have any money to pay you." And I thought about it really overnight, and I called them back and I said, "Look, I'll do it, 'cause I wanna meet this guy. I really like the way he thinks." And I broke my rule. And then the interesting thing that happened was that In preparation for writing, I knew I had heard, heard you enough to be very, very intrigued. So to prepare for writing the script, which for what became For Goodness' Sake, Rich gave me the, the, a binder full of Ultimate Issues.

And Ultimate Issues was a newsletter that I was publishing at the time on my own. People who went to my speeches subscribed, and that's where I really worked out my philosophy of life and my theology.

So he gives me a binder of The Ultimate Issues, and he gives me a box of tapes. Over the next, I would say, week— now we would say binge-watch— but over the week, I consumed all the— read all The Ultimate Issues, I listened to all the tapes. There probably were 10 or 15 tapes. And the one that really got me was "Why I Am a Jew," which was the first recorded lecture you ever sold. And in that lecture, it was like you were describing my life. I was that person who was so We had— Jews had assimilated so successfully in America that we wanted to marry Christians because we just, we felt so comfortable. This was all, this is what was happening to Jews over the last couple hundred years. So by the time I, we had our first meeting I was very, very excited to meet you, and I actually brought with me— I brought the, uh, my journal. You know, I keep a journal and have since 1982 or something like that.

You have it?

I have.

Of our first meeting?

Yeah, yeah, I have it.

And I— this is all new to me, folks. I'm glad, glad you're here.

This is, um, this was—

by the way, he's the most disciplined person I know, and I, I say that Totally matter-of-factly.

But you know why I have to be disciplined.

Well, you'll tell them. It's a fascinating theory of yourself that you have and of life.

Okay.

But you are, and one of the many manifestations is that you write every day in your journal, and even if it's just a paragraph.

Sometimes things are in here that I really don't remember, but—

Of course.

It's fun to look back. So this is from 1991.

What's the date?

Now here's the great thing. I'm just going to make the argument right away for the journal. You have no idea what day we met. It would be a struggle to figure out the year. You could do it if we really wanted to.

I'm not sure I could do the year, yeah.

But, and I couldn't either, but because of this journal, I can tell you exactly the day we met. It was November Monday, I mean, how would you even know it was Monday, right? Monday, November 25th, 1991.

Where? Where did we meet?

It was in Century City, in an office in Century City. And the headline— I often wrote headlines of what happened that day— met Dennis Prager, exclamation point. And this is what I wrote: Today was an important day in my life. I met the man who has changed the way I think, Dennis Prager. The occasion was to discuss the outline Susan Silverberg, she was the woman who collaborated with us on the script, and I have done for the Goodness video, that's what it was called at the time. If in my— it is my fond wish that this will be the first of many meetings with DP. To have this great man as my friend would indeed be an honor. The work he is doing is of such great value and importance. That's why I'm so delighted to be a part of this video project, a project which will help spread his— and then I put in quote— his gospel, ethical monotheism. The meeting itself went better than I expected. D.P. was wildly enthusiastic. At one point, he said that this was one of, quote, "best moments of his life." He sees that, and I underline that, he sees that much value in this video. His enthusiasm was both rewarding and infectious. It was also inspiring.

Hmm. God, is that moving. Really, I'm really moved. I never— this is all new to me. That's the beauty of having a journal. People— I wish I kept one, but I didn't. I asked my father, my late father, on an interview— I interviewed him on my radio show every year on his birthday. I asked him— we heard it this year because we replay some of them— Dad, do you have any regrets? None. I do. This is certainly one of them. By the way, it's important that people know you can watch this, that what we made— yeah, it's still with some of the biggest actors in Hollywood, thanks to David Zucker with his contacts. And, uh, it's all— it's on the internet. I mean, it's free, right? People could just watch it. It's called For Goodness Sake, and it's really worth it. It's very funny, very funny, and it's about goodness. And especially kids should, should see it. 1991 is 28 years ago. So that's when we met, 28 years ago. And I remember, I didn't keep a journal, but I remember very well meeting you, and I was very excited meeting you. So you were excited meeting me, I was, well, it's so typical that you laugh. It's like my other spouse, my wife, she would laugh too. It's very fine people in my life. But— and humble. But that was— it was obviously very important, that meeting. And so we collaborated on the script. And folks, you could watch this. And then we did two more with David Zucker. We did one on— and it's just as relevant. I saw it. It's also on the internet. And it's about diversity. Yeah, it's really, really, really worth seeing. And then I don't remember what the third was, but the— and I did the diversity one with Larry Elder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did a sequel. We called it For Goodness' Sake 2.

Oh, okay, fine.

But it was, it was two parts.

Yeah, yeah, it's really, really, uh, worth you folks watching.

So there's a little funny story about, about the second one we did. David could not direct the second one. He was busy. So he said to us, look, I can't do it, but I can recommend somebody. I met these two guys. They're, they're very talented. They're from Denver, Colorado. They just arrived in Los Angeles. I think they would be good for this project. And we said, look, David, You know, you're the comedy genius. If you say they're good, they're good. Their names were Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The first project Trey Parker and Matt Stone did in Hollywood was For Goodness Sake 2. They arrived in Hollywood in a Honda, beat-up Honda Civic. And that's, that's how they, they started. And I think I know what you'll say, and I agree with you.

Go ahead.

No, I think it had, yes, a, a big influence on them.

Correct. I do believe that. Yeah.

I mean, we even— there's even a term. I mean, South Park Republicans.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not saying they're, they're Republicans, I'm just saying their viewpoint was definitely shaped, I think in a very good way, by that experience. I totally agree.

I felt it then and I've felt it since.

Not too many people know that.

No, no, no, I'm sure.

Their origin story.

I'm sure almost nobody does. Anyway, it's all available on the internet. So the rest, as they say, is history. I think it'll interest you folks watching this that Dennis Prager said, I worked for years to convince you to be the producer of my radio show. And the reason that it took me years, he didn't want anything to even possibly interfere in our friendship. And I was certain it wouldn't. You were not as certain. And what you understandably were hesitant about was, I remember and I have no problem saying it, would I take criticism? Because the producer of a radio show who never has a criticism of the quote-unquote talent, that's what they're called, the people on the microphone, is useless. How do you get better if nobody's critiquing you? It's not possible. And so I assured you and assured you and assured you Finally, you took the leap. So I think they're curious, can I take criticism?

Yeah, you can take criticism and I can give it. You could take it, I can give it. But you know something, it goes both ways. I mean, there's no hesitation. We don't hesitate.

And because it's only for the greater good. You know what, that's another subject I should talk. How do you know if you're criticized out of love or criticized with darker motives and how to handle that and how to give it. How to give it is as important as how to take it.

We both had the same goal, which was to make the product better.

Yes, exactly.

That's all that ever matters. It's all that matters at PragerU. It's all that matters. Anybody comes up with a better idea, right? We have a very horizontal structure at PragerU. Everybody contributes. Anybody has a better idea will, will—

this is the power of being united with a higher value. Your ego gets bumped out. It just, it doesn't play a detrimental role. And that's the case at PragerU. It's the case on our radio show. And that's— we have a lot of fun on the radio show. I mean, you have to admit it. I mean, it's a unique— I mean, when you speak about having fun and Alan, you have to put it in perspective.

I have— doing the radio show is a great deal of fun. I love doing it. And at the same time, when I'm doing it, I'm all business.

No kidding.

It's all business. I'm thinking every second of the show, is this working, is this not working? And I can't—

And you can't imagine, no one can imagine the amount of work that goes into the show, both on your part and my part. People think, which is what I want them to think, that I show up, you know, shoot the breeze and go home. The amount that's going in my brain at any given moment, the amount of preparation the night before, the amount of preparation you do, people who subscribe to the show, and it is a great idea, get it without commercials called Prager Utopia, it's $5 a month, pragerutopia.com. You will not only get the show any time and keep it, and it's very powerful stuff. But you will get all the articles he sends me the night before. This is like a living compendium of what's happening on Earth through our eyes, because he knows exactly what I want. And you get his brilliant, pithy, one-line comment. Oh, it is. No, no, no. Sue and I live for it. I sometimes burst out laughing at your dismissal of a fool in one sentence. Anyway, it's in PragerUtopia. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I do want you to know about it. But it is, it's an extraordinary thing to do something every day for 3 hours. It's intense.

Well, you have a great phrase for it, which is that radio is a relentless mistress.

Yeah.

That's what it is. She never—

Right.

She's very demanding.

Yeah, and people expect you on every day, and I'm on almost every day. It's intense. It's a fantastic job. Fantastic. I thank God every day.

Not only every day, but there are the people— most people don't listen to the radio for 3 hours. So we, whatever, 10-minute, 15-minute, they may go away and come back, but we have to get them whenever they tune in, which is why, as you say, everything, every moment has to be interesting.

Yes, well, that's— did I do— I keep looking at Megan. Did we— did I do something on interesting? Did I do— I think I did a commentary on the fireside chat on the importance of being interesting. Check into that, because if That's— it's so obvious when you say it, but people don't think about it. It is the key to all communication, all communication of any type, musical, artistic, intellectual, religious, it doesn't matter. So anyway, we were, you know, I was gonna say, you know, it's like God brought us together. I'm always hesitant because I don't know if I'm special enough that God will intervene in my life, but if he does, he brought us together. I'll put it that way. I think you're less hesitant, not because of lack of humility, but I think you're— are you more comfortable with saying God has acted in your life?

I'm more comfortable than you are. There are people who are, I think, more comfortable than me.

Right.

But I'm a little further along on the scale than you.

Right. And not only that, but I have had Saturday afternoon lunch, Sabbath day in Judaism, lunch with Alan and his wife Susie. For now how many years? And one other couple.

I think that started like in 1993. We started doing that on a regular basis.

So that's 25 years. Yeah. That's another incredible bond that obviously we have. It's a very rich life. I mean, there's— and we're both unbelievably grateful. I know that. So that's how PragerU started. That's our relationship. It's truly a great one. And to— when I speak on the radio about the importance of friendship, I know what I'm talking about because I have benefited my whole life from male friends. And not that— and I believe women do from women friends. I'm a big believer in same-sex friendship. Have I done a thing on Friends? I think I have. Anyway, I'm always afraid of repeating myself, which is stupid, because nobody, including me, I don't get a point the first time. You gotta hear something over and over and over and over. Anyway, that's a big one. So should I take some questions, or have we already exhausted our time? We're at 30 minutes. We're at 30. Wow, look at that. My breath, it's— I have a clock inside. So I don't know, maybe, yeah, take a question? Okay, I'm fine with it. I love the questions. All right, so here's Sarah, 33, Modesto, California. Hi Sarah. On a recent fireside chat, you said something that resonated with me. If you learn to compromise your values, when will you stop? This was about parents who call me up and say, Well, what should I tell my daughter? She's at college and she knows that if she expresses a non-left-wing thought, she'll be penalized by her professor and get a lower grade, which happens regularly. And so I always say to them, look, I can't tell you what to tell your child, of course, but you're calling me up. I'll just— this is what I would tell my child, that if you start to compromise your values for grades, when will you stop compromising your values? And it's not a rhetorical question, it's a very real question. You might say, okay, I know I will compromise my values to get a good grade, but after that I won't. Okay, but it's a question you have to ask yourself. And I know, I know, Ben Shapiro, for whom I have enormous respect, and the He was a colleague and a friend, and he does incredibly important work. And Ben Shapiro and I were both scholars or speakers at a retreat, Passover holiday, and the, this subject came up, and he said, this is one of the few areas Dennis and I differ. Said, I think it's so important to get conservatives into Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Berkeley and Stanford and so on. That, you know, if you gotta just keep your mouth shut about your conservative ideas, it's worth it. And I respect that. So I'm giving you, Sarah, an argument in that regard. But from my perspective, I rather have people fight and end up at less prestigious universities or graduate schools because as I said, I think if you compromise, you pretty much don't stop. Then she writes, do you think this applies to friendships? If two people have completely different values, can they still be friends? Well, it depends on what the definition of a friend is. For me, a friend is someone that you share your most— you say anything to. That's the ultimate goal I believe, of a friend is someone I could talk to about anything. But if you're going to talk to them about your values and then even the nicest friend say, you know, I reject them completely, I mean, that's— I have the opposite view on every one. Of course it has to affect the friendship. Do you have any thoughts on this?

My thought is the same as yours. I mean, it's very hard for me I mean, people talk about this all the time. I, I wanted— it's, it's hard to be friends. You can be acquaintances and pals, you'll be friendly, friendly with, but to be friends with somebody who, who doesn't share your values, that's tough. I, I'm not sure I'd even want it. I, I wouldn't want to work that hard unless you felt you, you could persuade them to come to your point of view and that you, it was kind of like a worthwhile project.

Of course, look, there are people who know someone, you know, since 5th grade and they have such a bond from childhood.

I guess if you could just, yeah.

And then ignore it, I guess. But ultimately values are too important. I mean, you know, that's to a large extent who we are. What do we stand for? It's a tough one. I mean, it's really tough. That's why I'll tell you this, this I am adamant about. I don't want people to drop, I'm not saying drop friends and I certainly want you to keep your relatives in a loving way, but if you're dating somebody and don't share values, that, I'm sorry, you know, let me put it bluntly, I don't care how good the sex is, it doesn't matter. Because I can't imagine what else is keeping people who don't share values together, to be perfectly honest. Is that fair, Rod? Yes, I think that that's the realistic way. OK. You know, I'll take one more here. Is that all right? Yeah. Zaid, 26, in Jordan. I asked Megan to make a list of the countries that we just got questions from. I mean, we don't even know every country. Well, we do really. You do? I think that— don't we get reports from the internet on what countries people are watching?

Yeah, we do.

It's an enormous number. I mean, it's basically all over the world.

Yeah, the only place that doesn't watch PragerU videos is North Korea. Yeah.

And this in particular, the fireside chat, everything has taken off beyond anything we imagined. This, this is 700,000 every week. And by the way, I just want to say to those of you— a lot of you are regulars, and I really appreciate it— I'd like to double that number. And all you need to do is, you know, tell somebody else about it.

It's—

even if they don't agree, it's, it's, it is interesting, and that's, that's important. So here's Aiden Jordan. Hello, Dennis. I'm a Christian, and I'm grateful for my country Jordan protecting their Christian community despite the Muslim majority. But I still have some serious criticisms. My distant uncle was murdered due to the lack of freedom of speech in Jordan. Seeing the Western nations restrict freedom of speech disturbs me, as I've seen the effects of it firsthand. Is there any hope or solution to grant freedom of speech rights to the rest of the world's nations, especially Middle East countries? Well, I will just tell you this, Zaid. The bad news is that the freest country in human history is having the most important internal battle since the Civil War over slavery. The war over free speech. The left is opposed to free speech. And the right, and for that matter even the center, are adamantly for it. This is the battle PragerU is fighting. This is the battle at universities. It's— free speech is a value. It's not a human instinct. People want to control other people. People are afraid of free speech. They might hear something they don't agree with. So, it's worse than your question. You're worried about it spreading to Middle Eastern countries, and by the way, I agree with you and I salute you for it. But if we in America, the country of the Statue of Liberty, if we can't protect because one of the two political parties and the media and the social media and the educational institutions and the newspapers are suppressing free speech. This is the battle at this time. Any thoughts, Alan?

Well, it kind of takes us back to our case against YouTube.

Yeah.

That this is truly the tip of that iceberg. Spear. And I think it's important not only for the US, it's because the US leads. If we, as you point out, if we fall down on this issue, it's going to be a very bad thing for everybody.

For the whole world. And you know, I'll just end with this. The left rewrites history and rewrites language so that, for example, there are no longer illegal immigrants. There's now undocumented immigrants. As I've said a number of times on my radio show, maybe we'll rename burglary or a bank robbery an undocumented withdrawal.

I—

do you know, I just read— do you know that they're getting rid of the disabled list in baseball?

Did you know that they've gotten rid of it?

They got rid of it.

It's called the injured list now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it implies that disabled means that you can't play, but the disabled can play. But what if your disability comes from an injury? Which is what usually happens.

It's silly, but it's not silly. This constant—

No, it's frightening. Yes, that's correct. It's meaningless. But I mean, it's a trivial example. It's that, you know, if that were the only example, I wouldn't— but it happens everywhere. Anyway, Alan. Happy 100th episode! Wow, you did bring a cake. I was curious. Cheese cake. Oh, cheese. Sheep cheese. With not only sheep cheese, but sheep cheese with candle wax. That's the best type of sheep cheese. Thank you. That's very sweet. Oh, you got a chance to see me?

That truly cheesecake? That's like a slice of cheese.

No, no, it's just like— that is cheese. That is not cheesecake, right? This is cheese. And that's very sweet. I can't believe it's the 100th one. This is obviously very meaningful to us because I am a busy guy and I never miss this.

It's a, it's a great example of one of my, you know, I have lots of rules.

And yes, your rules are terrific.

And I don't, I don't take credit for this one, and I, I wish I could give credit to the, where I first heard it, but this idea: you can't accomplish a lot in a day or a week, but you can in a year. The people stop themselves from doing things because they can't achieve what they want immediately. But if you think about giving a project a year to develop— so this is a great example. That's 52 fireside chats in a year.

That's serious.

That's serious.

You're right. Oh, well, how are they blowing out on their own? I want them to blow them out. Is it because of the air conditioning?

Yes. Make a wish.

All right. So I wish many, many more years working with you. Is that a good wish?

That's a good wish.

Okay, everybody, onward and upward to number 101 next time.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

And something that has puzzled me pretty much my whole life is this: we call the generation of World War II— it has now become fashionable, at least, to call that generation the Greatest Generation. I, I don't buy that. I have great admiration for my parents' generation, absolutely. Fought World War II, the Korean War, and much of the Cold War and the sacrifices made at home through the families that stayed back and then the numbers of Americans who died abroad and just went under either a draft or volunteered to go and fight either the Japanese fascists or the Nazis. It is, it's a— there was a lot of greatness in that generation. Absolutely. I don't, I don't say it's the greatest generation. Is it greater than the generation of George Washington and the founders of the country? That's, that's an odd statement.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.