Dennis Prager

Talk radio host, writer, and founder of PragerU

NOTE: This interview was recorded in November 2024, a week before Dennis suffered a serious fall from which he is currently in recovery. Everyone at TRIGGERnometry wishes him well.

Who is Dennis Prager?

Dennis is one of the most widely listened to, influential conservative thinkers in America today. Since rising to prominence in the early 1980s, he has hosted nationally syndicated radio shows, written best-selling books, and, in 2009, founded PragerU, a nonprofit conservative advocacy group, through which he and selected thinkers advocate conservatism, capitalism, and Western principles. Today, the foundation’s YouTube channel boasts over 3 million subscribers, and Dennis continues to host the wildly popular talk radio programme, The Dennis Prager Show.

Why did we invite him on?

Dennis has had an incredible career, and even as he approaches 80, he shows no sign of slowing down. That level of drive is uncommon, but where does it come from? What continues to motivate him after nearly 60 years in the public eye?

What did we talk about?

”My life’s work has been to teach the consequences of secularism.”

Dennis’s perspective is an unusual one. While raised as an Orthodox Jew, Dennis has spent his career advocating Christianity. When discussing ethics, he marries the two, championing Judeo-Christianity over either individually. In Dennis’ mind, this is no stretch - “the first 2/3rds of the Bible is the Jewish holy book; that’s not insignificant” - and it is these shared principles that guided the West to its unique brilliance.

But that brilliance is dimming. We’ve discussed the effects of demoralisation, guilt, miseducation and unshared truths on the West’s view of itself, but is something more sinister afoot?

”The pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness has been essential to Western civilisation. And now, in the post-Judeo-Christian era, [that] pursuit is dead, and it [died] in the late 19th century.”

What metric does Dennis use to support his claim? The enlightenment? Political strife? Authoritarianism? The rise of alternative faiths in the Western world?

No, no, no, and no.