Fireside Chat Ep. 204 — Why Homeschool Is Winning

hi everybody i'm dennis prager this is fireside chat i already cleared it number 204 that's auto auto is my bulldog otto is is in many ways the great feature of the fireside chat i ca i by the way i'm okay with that so when people pass me at the airport and just say say hi to otto i'm okay with that too by the way i do want to say something that i sometimes remember to say most time i don't remember to say all of the fireside chats are relevant they may talk about a subject of the moment but they're all relevant for hopefully forever they take on big issues i always deal with big issues so feel free to go back to any number pick pick a random number 37 doesn't matter and by the way if you want to binge so it's worthy of binging on so just a word about the fireside chats okay so i'm gonna have let's see we are three three prager force members and one prageru staff member who have been homeschooled and i want to talk to you about that for a moment and then we're going to get straight to these young people i've never met them before and i i assume it will be fascinating so let me just say this i have said for decades sending your kid to college is playing russian roulette with their values in russian roulette i believe there are six chambers to a a a a gun one of them has a bullet so you have a one in six chance of killing yourself in college it's the opposite five of the six chambers are filled with bullets you have a one in six chance of your kid not being ruined that's the tragedy and i mean ruined and now it's the same for elementary schools and high schools the the the tragedy of the desecration of something holy cold education in america done by the left because the left ruins everything it touches there has never been an exception since lenin vladimir lenin not the john lennon of the beatles fame is uh is one of the rules of life i'm not talking about liberals i'm talking about leftists i have no problem with liberals except that they vote for the left and thereby ruin liberalism but that's another subject what's happening in the schools to your kids their innocence is ruined they have drag queen story hours when they're five years of age they're told that they're not boys and girls they're students because we can't have a binary distinction in school we don't know if they're boys and girls they may change their mind these things are really done at schools america is depicted as a systemically racist hate-filled genocidal imperialist country i'll give you an example of one of the many many lies told to your children that slavery made america rich that's pure a lie slavery made america poor the poorest part of america was the south the south was the slave states so that's one proof here's an even better proof about let's see 340 000 or so africans came to the u.s as slaves about i don't know 5 million 6 million went to brazil what is that 10 times more more than 10 times as many slaves if slavery made america rich why didn't it make brazil rich why did it make the caribbean rich it's a lie there's no truth to slavery made america rich there's no truth to it there's no truth to america was founded in 1619 your children are not only learning lies they're learning pernicious lies it's a bad idea to send your kid to a typical american school private or public what are the choices a good school some some exist or home school which i'm a very big fan of however people are afraid they're intimidated and i don't blame them it sounds like you will have to change your whole life if you have your child homeschooled so we're going to talk to some homeschool children by the way see our film miseducated not as in miss america but miseducated as in misstatement or mishap or misdeed see it and you'll get an idea of what your kids are in fact learning when they go to school a regular school a government school or a private school so we're going to talk to these uh four young people who have all been home schooled and we're going to find out how intimidating it is and it might be by the way i mean i i my commitment is to telling you the truth but that is the finest alternative unless you have a great school in your area that exists mostly in rural areas on rare occasion in an urban locale as well so we're now going to turn to our homeschooled prager force members okay so let's meet you and we'll start with you brett how old are you i'm 19. and you currently live where i live in boise idaho oh i didn't even establish that when we spoke earlier but you grew up in chattanooga i lived in chattanooga until i was about 11 years old and then i moved to burbank california which is a suburb of la and then this past year i was part of the california exodus so i left california and went to idaho you and so many others idaho is a major i would say idaho i know so many californians who've moved idaho not in any order texas tennessee florida those seem to be then there's utah and and arizona but uh uh montana is also huge so have you met californians in boise i have a few of them um were not as common as i expected but we all keep a pretty low profile because yeah they'll throw stones at you yeah yes they will why do they want people who've ruined one state to ruin another exactly i totally get it's like new yorkers in florida don't come we'll pay you not to come i i get it exactly so i've prefaced it that my family's from tennessee my very smart my parents are from north carolina and georgia so i always say oh i'm moving here from the south that's very funny i will be in chattanooga uh uh in a week ironically uh but uh i i love that part of the country so okay so you were homeschooled i was yes from from the beginning i went to public school from third grade no from kindergarten to third grade and was pulled out and then i went to public school again in my ninth grade year uh because i felt like i might be missing something i think i bought into the idea of the american stereotypical high school that's portrayed in movies and television and i thought maybe that's something that i should experience or want to i absolutely despised it i felt like i was held back that year and my academic suffered um mental health suffered i really did not enjoy it and so i finished up the rest of my high school career homes you know why you didn't enjoy it because you're healthy let me answer the question so this is very important you suffered academically there is no question that kids in the vast majority of homeschool kids learn more than kids in a regular high school you feel that that's correct absolutely and i did on paper i did well i ended up first in my class out of about 1200 students that year and that's without doing any work exactly um but i had no joy of learning which i had had for my entire academic career up until that point i felt like i was sitting in a room for eight hours while i was being talked at and i didn't retain as much information as i had in previous years i felt like what i was being taught the curricula was missing something i had already you know been supplementing other kinds of pieces of education from my family i was doing online classes while still in public school to try to supplement it because my so you had learned more in every subject as a homeschool child absolutely that's fascinating so you stayed in a regular high school for one year one year and then asked to return yeah exactly okay so i'm going to ask all of you something like this but one more to you about this so your home school i don't even know if the word class is correct how many did you meet with on a daily basis um none it was oh it was just you and your parents it was just so from third grade to about or eighth grade it was my mom creating the curriculum she did a classical yeah just with you just with me so how did you meet friends i played tons of sports i was a gymnast i did ballet for 14 years i did musical theater i would take art classes i where would you do that if you weren't in a regular school uh community centers uh you honestly a lot of homeschoolers you can be part of like did you have close friends very close friends okay so i'll leave the 64 000 question for after all of you why shouldn't parents be intimidated in starting this okay so to you joseph how old are you i'm 18. so you're still in quote unquote high school well i've been 18 since february so i'm i'm still in quote unquote high school yeah right and you're being homeschooled i am yeah where at home what city i i i thought i figured that out uh yeah this city is called lindenwald in new jersey new jersey yes so you came here from idaho you came here from new jersey that is correct okay uh you you're and you're a member of pragerforce we'll talk about that that to all of you later so what is your story are you alone again with a parent or do you have a group if you count my seven other siblings and yes i have a group are you catholic i am not neither is my parents my dad is a reformed catholic he's uh falls under protestant evangelical okay so it's an evangelical yes right so whenever i hear seven kids orthodox jew mormon evangelical catholic and i'm right 99 of the time the others it's it's because the uh the birth control didn't work so uh okay so you have so you study with all of your siblings for the first about 10 years of my home school life yeah and right now and right now i largely study alone okay and how did you make friends um at first it was because we had a co-op that met once a week my church um neighbors and then as i got older it was online classes and you'd meet through the online yes we would meet on online classes people from around the world we'd enter chat rooms together uh this one big one called discord um and then we get to know each other it's very hard to be fake after six months on discord because there's some topics come up that you cannot avoid interesting so uh those are friends through the internet and what about real life friends uh my best friend from childhood was my neighbor and still is still is yes i see how the since you did not go like you did like brett did to a regular school how would you compare even though you didn't go how would you compare homeschool to other schools i'd say homeschooling is free because in like you have the freedom to learn you have the freedom to explore topics you're interested in and you learn your own pace for me um about sixth grade i started overtaking two my siblings were really close to me in age so we were taking the same history course together but they were going too slow and my mom tried to hold me back and she was like okay oh they were at school no we were all at home oh oh i see so you could go at your pace i get it my mom tried to hold on right hold us back and then she's like fine you know what so what do you intend to do now uh next year i'm not sure i'm trying to figure that out so what are your what are you what are you debating between um well college-wise it's would i go in for what i take photography classes uh maybe turn that into a career maybe go in for some form of wildlife conservation whether it's a field biologist or maybe pursue this passion that's developed over the past year for helping people with depression more naturally i'm just not sure which one at the moment how did that why did that passion develop because i developed severe depression due to my own folly and then i was as i was in it my way to get out of it was to research it well that's uh its own interview how are you now significantly better still has still have rough days rough weeks but significantly better would you rather not openly talk about your your folly as you put it i'm perfectly fine with talking about it and that folly was uh i spent roughly eight to 12 hours a day playing video games in a dark room skipping meals occasionally because i didn't feel like going and eating i didn't have social interaction i didn't even interact with my family for the most part so it was largely just i'm very glad i asked you and i'm glad you were open about it i've read a lot about the video game issue obviously there's no question you know more about it why i read a very interesting piece by a psychoanalyst and they described it as you get it wasn't adrenaline it was another hormone that is created in the excitement of the video game and you become addicted to the hormone does that sound right yeah um works along similar functions with things like social media it's dopamine is one of them dopamine there was dopamine that's correct yes so breaking out of it has to be hard i'm still trying to break out of it yeah oh fascinating do you go to a 12-step program largely it's uh a mental battle with myself yeah but are there 12-step programs i haven't heard of one really i don't understand why because video game addiction is is real as drug addiction i that's something i've also been trying to figure out well you if you want to help a community i i know a lot about aa i have i've not personally been a member uh but i i know a lot about it family members have and it's phenomenal and it gives you a a a base of humans who have your exact same experience and it's tremendously empowering i so it's something since you want to deal with that even perhaps professionally you you might want to start i i let's see i guess it would see there's a a there's n a there's uh sex anonymous there's uh food uh food uh uh it's not food anonymous over readers anonymous and gambling anonymous now video game anonymous i'm not joking i think i think it's something as real as the others i wouldn't disagree but one thing that people don't recognize is often people addicted to video games not always also addicted to pornography because they go hand in hand they both run off the dopamine system and they both have you're sitting in front of computer what else should they think to do while we're going down the list it can vary yeah no i'm sure i'm sure i i i was just entering the realm of dark humor which is what keeps me sane well i salute you look all of life is a battle with oneself this is the greatest single lesson of religion when it's done right you're supposed to battle yourself from from age three when a parent says to their kids say thank you you're battling yourself you don't want to say thank you it doesn't come naturally we the whole point is to battle yourself the rest of your life so i i salute you for doing that all right we'll continue in a moment thank you all right rachel yes where where do you live i live in florida in the panhandle of florida what do we do we don't want any californians on our panel i'm fine with that actually you're in the panhandle which as i said earlier i know to be the central time zone yes you're you're you're a different world in the panhandle than the rest of florida yes the further north you go you're really alabama yes yes we joke that we live in l.a lower alabama oh that's right you live in l.a lower alabama that's right i heard that that's great so was it was it a happy childhood absolutely do you intend to stay there in florida yes i mean i want to live close to my family um we are very close-knit family so how many are are there in your family there's nine kids so eleven total nine wait eleven total family members including the parents no you have eight siblings yes sir do you know their names yes can i hear them okay rob and then i'm rachel rebecca noah zeke lydia sayla jedediah and jethro i detect a biblical uh connection yes with the exception of my older brother only because he's a junior everyone else is a biblical name so are you also evangelicals yes sir we're southern baptist what were your parents raised both of them southern baptist so they didn't did they have a born-again experience yes or when they were young they accepted christ as their savior so but they were raised in a christ-centered family yes sir right so you are homeschooled and how many so in your case also nine of you being homeschooled yes so how do you answer for the average family that has two kids or even one how can they manage to homeschool well i i feel like the the fewer kids you have at some times it's less intimidating because you don't have to worry about multiple age ages and grade levels um so for families with a smaller amount of children it's almost a little bit less daunting and you were homeschooled by one or both parents my mom was the primary teacher my dad was the principal so if you were bad you were sent to the principal's office absolutely and he's he's an air force vet so you know you you would get it oh you don't mess around with air force vets oh that that's really a riot i get it so how old are you i'm 19. and what does that mean in laypersons terms is that college age what are you well i am a college student but i am ahead of everybody else i'm going to graduate with my bachelor's in december um how old i'm 19. i'm a sophomore in college age-wise but i'm a senior academic you're going to have your ba at 20 i'll have my bs in criminal psychology at 20 at 19. i'll be 19. yes and what college liberty university but you're doing it online online yes how is that working out i enjoy it it's very much what i'm used to with homeschooling i taught myself for a lot of my high school career um through just reading textbooks um a couple lectures from other curriculums but for the most part i taught myself sometimes and so what what are your hopes for your future my ultimate goal is to be a stay-at-home wife and mom like my mother was um it is you see if we have someone here who went to berkeley if you said that at berkeley you would be stoned either not with marijuana with actual rocks yes yes i just want to make that clear uh i she's off camera but olivia does anybody in all of berkeley say what she just said absolutely not not one not one uh that is my that is exactly what i imagine that if a girl got up in class when they said well so what are your plans well frankly as much as i'd like a career i really think the best thing i could do with my life is raise good people and and i'd love to marry a good man if she had said i would i would like to mate with an animal they would have more respect i i'm not joking it sounds sick and it is sick but i'm not joking that that is about the worst thing one could say but if you're in pensacola and you are on liberty university's website and you come from a christian home it's kosher yes to mix religious metaphors for a moment that that is priceless so how are you going to meet a guy well how does it work there will you you're going to go on hinge i'm sure you're not going to go on tinder but uh what will you do i would love to meet a guy at church currently the people in my age group i do not believe are at a maturity level that i would expect for marriage um but i would love to meet a man at church who i know shares my same values both religiously and politically i i wish you that because that's that's how many kids you want nine as many as the lord will give me all right so could be you might beat your parents i uh i bless you with that uh with that wish thank you great to meet you and finally taylor yes sir so taylor you're you're you're apart you're staff at prageru i am yeah i've been on staff about a year and a half do they like you that was a joke [Laughter] we assume if you're still there they like you do you like them oh yeah i'm really loving it almost everyone will wit gets on my nerves sometimes but yeah that is hilarious didn't they make a doormat with will's name they sure did and it's in front of craig strazari our cmo his office and uh people don't know that i really reveal that prageru secret there is a doormat with will's name on it not for sale but it is there it's not not for sale that's right that's that's wrong you would be wrong to sell it that's correct but when i saw that i burst out laughing that that was pret craig did that he did yeah so we need a craig doormat i mean well if we you know it says in the bible eye for an eye mat for a mat it seems just it's a well-known read of that verse so uh where do you so where did we find you where were you living when you came to us i was actually here in la i was working at a marketing firm in hollywood for a few years and but you know was not finding meaning in that and so no kidding that's a shock marketing firm in hollywood yeah it's a very big source of meaning in life so were you homeschooled i i was homeschooled for about half of my high school years and then i had a shorter stint in elementary school that i was homeschooled why half of your high school years so i'm from a missionary i'm a missionary kid um and mormon um christian events oh really evangelical missionaries where did they go um so when i was younger we we we lived in oklahoma but my dad traveled all over the world he's been to like over 60 some odd countries um but we had stints living in brazil panama and honduras before i graduated high school and it and at in those places you were homeschooled um yeah in part i would go like in brazil for example in in my eighth grade and ninth grade years i would go to brazilian school in portuguese in the mornings um i didn't learn anything except portuguese and and talk to kids can you speak portuguese uh yeah i'm pretty close to fluent um now uh what else do you speak um so my spanish is pretty much on par with uh that i after learning portuguese in brazil i came back to the states went to public high school tested out of a couple levels of spanish just based on what i learned from portuguese because they're both latin-based romance languages and then learned spanish after moving to panama where i graduated high school and then i studied french in college and did a study abroad in france as well so i speak french pretty fluently as well very unimpressive uh i i i'm a crazy bell languages i studied a lot myself i love it i love that you know it now there's a great example although i can't credit home schooling although that is interesting did you learn a foreign language i know you don't have the mic you learn latin none any foreign language german and sign language really german and sign language you know sign language taylor i did not know sign language oh man oh my god and we hired him so why when you say you did half of high school in high school and half a home was that in america um my sophomore year i was living in the nashville area and that was uh homeschooled so you never went to a high school in the u.s i did my junior year i was in minnesota and i went to uh public it's amazing and not neurotic maybe i don't know his stuff got something for taylor he's he doesn't know what state he's in yeah wait so give i want the chronology first year of high school you were aware um brazil and you were going to school there yes homeschooling in the afternoons uh brazilian public school in the morning ah second year um second year homeschooled in nashville um completely just homeschooled third year third year uh moved to minnesota i went to public high school there in my junior year okay good so you have a public high school experience yes how did you enjoy it um i really didn't um i i was because of my classes being jumbled you know my education was not in the same you know system every four years i had a lot of classes with sophomores even though i was a junior and i was had to kind of be a loner so i basically just went to went to the public high school excelled in academically but after school i just went and got a job and worked at starbucks and made a lot of money and you know saved up for college and that was kind of my what'd you do with the fourth year fourth year we moved to panama and central america and so i was at a christian english-speaking school in panama private school and i graduated with about 13 people in that school did you find english speaking school boring um that was a joke i i i'm just kidding given your previous experience is panama as hot as they say yeah it's uh every day it's uh you know somewhere in the 90s uh usually i'm human and very humid and because it's on the equator yep it's terrible yeah but they just have a rainy season and a dry season but the weather's awesome so were you in an air-conditioned house um actually that's a good question we had a couple different questions when i was there another question is there guy's a 90 degree heat and it's humid every day and he thinks it's a good question that is hilarious okay were there where their sherpas fanning you is that was that better no we we do have it's hard to keep it straight in brazil we did not have ac but in panama we did we had window units in brazil you did not have ac no we were that's rough yeah what city bello horizonte um so it's the fourth largest city behind brasilia sao paulo and rio but no one's ever heard of it it's got three or four million people but also warm but it's warm but it's kind of in the mountains so it had a it's in the mountains i see okay so that's quite an experience and and so you were also christian yes and your parents were born into a christian home as well um they kind of were born nominally in christian households but really sort of became passionate about it in their um early 20s and that led and how many siblings do you have i have three siblings what happened in your family oh yeah we missed the best your mother go on strike that was a joke okay folks you know you gotta you gotta live you gotta live well okay uh four kids or just yes for given your experiences merely for like yeah i won't ask them their names if and if he didn't know them oh really oh that's very nice why i don't know i'll ask you why later but anyway so uh you are do you recommend homeschooling i do um well it depends on on the context i mean having experienced everything i think the biggest factor is do you do do the parents understand what the students are being exposed to when they go to whatever school environment they're going to um and are they involved in their child's life and what and you know talking to them when they come home from school and that type of thing but home school at least you don't have to worry worry about what your child's being exposed to with a different culture and i'm a little bit older than them obviously i'm 31 um at my time you're 31 i am you look 23. uh i'll take that as a compliment it is it is you know you're did you know he's 31 that's somewhere around there i'm asking i'm asking megan by the way just i'm not looking at a chair just uh did did you know seriously no i didn't i knew he was somewhere else do you all agree with me that he doesn't look 31. yeah so are you married um yes i was married two weeks ago just got married oh that's great that is exactly the answer i wanted how'd you meet her you could say tinder um actually no through a friend group okay um here in l.a yeah through a what group a friend group my my roommate met her brought her over as part of like some game nights and stuff so i that's right was she homeschooled um no she went to public school in the atlanta area i see well congratulations to you thank you you want more than four kids um we're thinking three or four so i'm on the four sides i think she's on the three side but we'll see if we can talk about two it doesn't sound like a very tough thing to work out between three and four so it's interesting you all want what you had right that is an interesting uh little insight to a small group i don't know if it's true generally that people want the number that they grew up with i wonder if that's true it ended up with me my fault my parents had two boys i have two boys and my son has two boys my wife has two boys i don't know anything other than two boys i don't know three boys and i don't know any girls so you i really repeated uh my experience all right so let's talk about homeschooling specifically now that we met you all right and anybody could take the mic would you all recommend it or is there any ambivalence on the part of any of you you would all recommend it i think we'd all recommend it yeah okay so then any of you answer and this is i don't know the answer to this question but i know it's the most important every one of you said that a parent supervised your education maybe both so a parent is is watching this knows the dangers of of of an american school today and thinks well i can't give up my my career uh my my job we can't afford it so what do you say to them something that my parents talked about all the time and still do is you mentioned not being able to afford giving up a career but are you able to afford giving up your child's future and their values and their belief system so it's kind of weighing the pros and cons of will we have to stick to a budget um will we have to live with things less than we have now um but have children who are strong in their values and their morals and who will stand firm on those beliefs or will we live less frugally with children who are lukewarm and don't know what they're believing well let me amplify on that on that answer for a second so i i have a very uh common thing that i not common but frequent thing that i do i almost any adult that i meet who has grown children i will ask them and if they're if they're conservative which most are i will say how many of your children how many children do you have three four how many of them share your values almost never is the answer all of them and and frequently the answer is none of them and the pain in in that parent is so deep i don't even pursue the the questioning anymore and they'll just say yeah well they went to college and i lost them or now high school i mean it may be now kindergarten so that that is simply to reinforce your answer however having said that is there a way and maybe you know folks don't know this but is there a way to homeschool a child and not be full-time homeschool mom or dad so i did a couple of different combinations of styles of homeschooling my mom built my curriculum like i said for many years and she stayed at home but when i left the public high school i did an online high school and the curriculum was completely customizable so my mom was still able to say this book is ridiculous she's not going to read this she's going to read classic literature instead she's going to take latin she's going to read my mom is a textbook publisher at ww norton prior to really prior to becoming a stay-at-home mom and so she had textbooks in mind that she wanted me to read and was able to pick those out but then independently i was able to do that studying and i had teachers that were grading my essays that were proctoring exams and she was able to go back to work um and then i never did this personally i think you mentioned a co-op i believe but there are programs where many different parents in a neighborhood or community that's what i was hoping to hear because i that's right your parents seem to have made a choice it's not the only choice in homeschooling of a full-time parent doing full-time work with their children so i just want people to know that and if you do the research and it's not hard i go on the internet i assume co-op is that one of the one of the things co-ops or there's lots of different words for just this um unique styles of homeschooling whether it's they a few families come together and they hire a private teacher like a governess and who teaches the children all together or one parent who excels in math will teach like all five kids in the neighborhood math and then another parent on a different day will teach something else so you share the responsibility and sometimes those are parents putting that together themselves but a lot of cities a lot of communities have that in place in boise actually in my small town outside of boise i was in our grocery store recently and i saw a sign and it was one woman who's a former educator who had created a like private homeschool co-op oh that's perfect and she taught everything on her little flyer it talked about and she got paid presumably exactly so it's about 12 students i think is her max and she teaches self-reliance american values religion she went through the list on this flyer and portuguese exactly so there are many options and especially with how online everything is going especially now you know prageru kids and online schools um where parents do not need to be the ones that are facilitating the structure i'm glad that you you you emphasize that i i don't want people to avoid raising good kids because they think they can't afford to so your answer is right that answer is right there are a lot of possibilities and and that's what i assumed by the way you folks should watch uh miseducated uh what would we call it a little documentary about about it's very eye-opening even for me and i i really know what's happening in schools because of my radio show i cover it almost every day but it is definitely worth watching it's a prageru so you're all in prager force have you attended any prager force meetings meeting other other members from different parts of the world this was my first time meeting another oh this is your first time my close friend group is comprised almost entirely of figure fourth members and we travel around the united states like meeting each other and being together god is that awesome that really is awesome that's a way to meet a guy yeah no i'm thinking about you and what about you you want to meet a guy yeah working on it with somebody specific um beginning but how does it meet him online actually hinge yeah hinge so you see i i didn't say hinge i said tinder is a joke but i didn't say that but even tinder i know fantastically conservative couples are met on tinder i don't care how you meet on the uh i don't understand why people avoid online i don't understand it you if you're in total command you choose what you want to say that's the best part is that on hinge you can specify christian you can specify conservative yes exactly and then it filters out everybody else i know a girl who simply says i like dennis prager so every guy on the left knows to avoid her and and she's ruled down she doesn't have to waste one starbucks coffee the top of my profile it said what are your goals in life and i said uh homestead and destroy the department of education and uh so i knew i would attract the right kind of man oh my god and i haven't dated you i just want you to know destroy the department of education i i would have i would have respond would have what has it turned left or right whatever it is yeah well i i didn't go to cal like olivia did but i went to ucla and so we shared the same experience of we're we were in you know prestigious universities and we should have been exposed to the right kind of men basically and they just weren't there so you kind of of course they're not there that's exactly right well i tell young women to to pursue marriage early because uh i have its very sad motto good men don't grow on trees i mean good women don't grow on trees either to be honest but a man has a longer chance so to speak and there it's just it's it's silly to think you let me tell you women here is an interesting thing so i ask this question i know what you i think i know what you would answer i pray i know what you would answer but i whenever i meet a woman under 30 i i i'm i love talking to strangers i don't care i hug strangers i if they could be 90 they could be 19. i don't get i don't care i'm very comfortable strangers so if i meet a woman under 30 a waitress someone in line at the airport i live at airports so that's why i use that uh sitting next to in some other venue and i'll say come on you mind if i ask you a question of course they always say no i don't mind so here it is here's my question and i think i've said this on on prager uh on these chats but it doesn't matter so i will say i'm i'm offering you a choice of two guarantees you can have one guarantee but this is really important it doesn't mean you cannot have the other it only means one is guaranteed which guarantee would you want the guarantee of a great marriage or the guarantee of a great career and the answers are so interesting and it's about 50 50 which is depressing just depressing because they're not going to be as happy the ones who say great career are just not almost ever going to be as happy as the ones who said great marriage especially since you could still have a great career it's just not guaranteed the other interesting thing why is otto leaving this is a new development you know why it's more than a half hour he's paid for a half hour and and and that's it he he we have to write a new contract that on occasion he has to stay in his bed longer this is really funny just was that on camera that he when he got up and left that is all that is a great moment so it is so interesting the ones who say great career so i will say well do you want to get married yeah yeah i'm open to it that's the most common answer i'm open to it i mean i i i'm open to 10 000 things but doesn't mean i i care about it it's like they either really don't give a damn or they can't admit they do and i'm not sure which it is i think it's a mixture of both that that is how on uh that's and then we wonder why why is the depression rate among young women higher than ever in recorded american history that's a it's a great example so you're uh you're all in prager force have you gone to any prager force meetings yet so you're with friends going visiting pregnant force people around the country that's a great idea for all of you and uh but also we have meetings you know periodically but because of the lockdowns it's been it's been difficult are we going to resume that oh yeah to come to pragerforce meetings okay so we really got a good sense i think of you i hope you'll see again miseducated right so did would you like to ask me anything you don't have to but you know you get first chance beyond the people watching um i would just like to hear your uh marriage advice for our newlywed so here i have a lot first of all you should look on the internet i have a two-part uh i've been writing columns for 20 years every week so i don't only write on politics so i wrote a column about 15 years ago questions you should answer before getting married two of you the two of you if you're thinking of getting married so it's too late don't you shouldn't read it but uh no no but it's it's fun to read and and for everybody else it's on the internet but i i do you ask for a piece of advice this will sound uh not deep but it's deep so here is the first question i ask a couple when when they're thinking of getting married i don't ask do you share values i don't ask do you love each other i don't ask are you in love i ask them do you enjoy each other and someone who's been married many years not in one marriage but many years i'm telling you that's what it comes down to because that includes everything do you enjoy each other includes values i i'm not going to enjoy someone who thinks america is a cesspool okay no matter how wonderful the human i can't enjoy someone who has the opposite values of mine so it includes all these things it may not include are you in love i think in love is great i don't want to knock that but nevertheless there are people who love each other and don't enjoy each other just as there are people who love each other and don't like each other there are a lot of parents who love their kids and don't like them like to my i think like is more sustaining than love in the long in the long run and i'm a big fan of love and i really love my wife nevertheless if you told me i could have one or the other i would take like so that's why i i do i do ask do you enjoy each other related to that is do you miss the person when you're not together that to me is about as great a uh a question and thing to have as you can have and i am really happy to say i miss my wife and i'm not with her and uh whenever i come home i look at her and i go honey you missed me which is not what any of you expected right now but she's she's learned to find me funny uh in any event that's that's what i uh is that at all helpful yeah thank you very much good and good luck to you thank you anybody else want to uh bounce an idea off me or or a question want to ask me the capital of idaho i guess by the way it's not boise it's boy c you said boy c boy c see i i i listened to that stuff did you pick on that pick that up everybody says boise correct outside of boise so there are a lot of places like that there where the locals are the only ones who pronounce it a certain way okay yes i suppose just another advice question what's your best piece of advice for a young person like myself after college find a a a spouse i'm working on it yes i know you are that is my best piece of advice uh if you're if people are asking me that career-wise i've talked a lot about this including on fireside chats about the whole issue of you know follow your passion which uh is if you can make your passion a livelihood you're very lucky most people can't i mean what if you're well if you're you know your passion you you who said photography you did so i happen to be into photography so are you are you pretty good at it do you have a good camera i mean i'd say i'm pretty good at it but that's just me bouncing off other people i'm not forgetting yeah no that's fair that's good what what do you like to photograph usually nature related so macro birds wildlife landscape so this is awesome so i've been into photography my whole life when i was your age i would have given the exact same answer then at about midway in my life i completely went to photographing people i my interest in photographing mountains today is is so much smaller but when i when i was your age i landscaped photography i traveled with a tripod so i could have the smallest f-stop and get the most detail i i mean i i so anyway so that's a good example of it's very tough to make a living in photography very tough and what's your camera by the way uh the canon eos 80d is that a full frame no it is not right so okay uh that doesn't matter i was just curious you'll you'll want a full frame eventually yes yeah but but you can get great shots with the 80d yeah i have the the 5r yeah so you okay did you see i hope i hope they caught that had i said i have a rolls royce he would not have reacted that way and i don't blame you i have no interest in the rolls-royce but a 5r yeah now it's phenomenal it's almost hard not to take a great picture that that's how good it is so anyway so here's a good example that's your passion or one of your passions let's say and the question is can you make a living doing it now my father's passion is a great example my father's passion and i did this on a fireside chat i do i vividly recall this recently so i won't belabor the point i'll just tell you he really wanted to be a doctor really really did and this was the this was the 1930s or 40s and [Music] his family had no money to send him to medical school so he became an accountant like what does that have to do with medicine nothing and he ended up loving being an accountant and that was a great credit to him he decided to love what he did instead of doing what he loved so that's a piece of advice i would give people you may end up doing something and my my belief is there is almost nothing i couldn't love doing i would talk myself into it and love it you know obviously i'm beyond belief lucky to make a good living doing what i do but if i didn't do this i would do something else and i wouldn't be an unhappy man i wouldn't let myself be an unhappy man those of you who did not see my interview with janmi park you you have missed something you can see it obviously it's the it's two two episodes ago this woman was sex trafficked as it as a young teenage girl in china she was from north korea the woman radiated happiness if she had ptsd you would understand it if if she were taking massive antidepressants you would understand it and i asked her why are you happy your father was tortured almost to death by the north koreans you watched your mother raped you you were trafficked as a korean in china and at 13 why are you happy and she said i chose to be which is my belief that is that is deeply my belief everything in life is a choice everything that's did i ever talk about that on on fireside chat it's been a while yeah that was the the sermon i gave for my high jewish high holy day services you you choose everything you choose to be happy by the way this was something maybe i should talk about you choose to be religious people think that they they lead a religious life when they when they come into faith i i don't believe that some do i didn't i chose to lead a religious life because i didn't want to lead a secular life i knew where happiness and meaning were and it was the greatest choice i ever made so so life is filled with choices like choosing to get married it's a choice that a lot of your generation isn't making and they will pay the price later on in life of that there's no there's no doubt so anyway that's my view on on the passion issue and uh and and what you do for a living so good luck good anything else anybody want to raise an issue what are the things that give you hope for the future of this country you no no i'm not being cute i just spoke in hungary to young people because of prageru they they watched the videos they invited me same in romania three years ago when i meet young people who treasure freedom uh that that begins with that treasure liberty and have uh good values and and believe in personal responsibility and kindness etc etc i i get hope then having said that i want you to know the crisis in america is unprecedented we have never ever debated the issue of free speech let alone suppressed it it was the one thing everybody agreed on i may hate what you say but you can say it and the left has destroyed free speech to a large extent in this country for the first time in american history it has never happened since 1776. this is why we got the statue of liberty from france and they didn't give it to any other country and they didn't keep it for themselves because this is the freest country or was till the left took over it's a very very i i i don't want to i don't want to depress you but i don't want to fool you into a fool's paradise you are inheriting a much worse america than i inherited from my parents there is no comparison my biggest concerns in high school were girls not freedom not can i practice my religion not not uh will i be fired from my job because they don't like my opinion it didn't occur to me i could worry about little stuff not that girls was little stuff but you understand what i'm saying i didn't have any macro worries none communism was an evil we had to confront it but america is not communist but america is closer to what the soviet union was today than to america at my age that is mind-blowing and i know i know it because i went to the soviet union a lot and i speak russian and that was my field of study i so you have real battles ahead and i'll tell you this you will get a lot of meaning fighting for a good cause i mean i rather you you could think about other things but there is a reward in in struggle there is i mean clearly for those of you a christian which is all of you suffering for truth is a very basic christian uh theological value where um you know i i often i i have a joke that i tell so i i i made this up it's a very funny story i made up i tell this to christian audiences and to jewish audiences so imagine a a a jewish group a protestant group and a catholic group they're going to have a beautiful inter-religious interfaith lunch together and it's set up that they're they're all given um over ripe cantaloupe which group will complain the most so everyone knows the jews will complain the most so it's it's a give i'm jewish i could i could say it no no problem it's a given the jews will complain i don't know between the protestants and the catholics it's a tough call so the question is why so i one of my theory i have i have a whole bunch of of of theories on why but one is christian's theology christian theology holds that suffering is christ-like jews think suffering stinks jews find nothing good about suffering christians on the other hand christ suffered on the cross for me so i i'm going to give a damn about cantaloupe so that's my theory i'm a theory on almost everything so uh anyway uh you're gonna suffer that's just it but if you're prepared to uh it it you'll you'll lead it's a it's a it's a worthy cause to to protect this country against the left but uh so the hope issue yes i have hope but i one final answer to your question i don't do anything based on whether i'm optimistic or pessimistic i think optimism and pessimism are useless the uh the pessimist tends not to do anything it's gonna come out crappy anyway why do i do anything the optimist tends not to do anything it'll it'll in the end it'll all work out why do anything so they're both excuses not to fight i only have one question what do i have to do and that's what motivates me as well as what does god want me to do that's a big the same thing basically but i don't ask will it will it work i mean i do ask that i hope it'll work but i ask what do i have to do that's that's the question that uh i think should propel you so anyway you do but you do working at prageru uh is a massive source of uh strength to me there's no there's no doubt and to you and to you who work there or or or are affiliated there in in your way do you have a question i do have one question you do he's going to ask me a photography question well in that case then i then have three questions two or two should be short but i know photography discussions can go quite long um number one was suggested to me by i'm not gonna name who what is your favorite bird that's hilarious i don't have a favorite bird i suspect it as much yes well at least i'm honest i i could i should have said the northwest colorado uh hubbing bird no that's not a bird eagle okay i don't have an answer the bald eagle that's my favorite there we go the bald eagle yeah um i'm gonna ask the more serious question first so i don't misplace the words um so you said we should be fighting for the country correct right how there are many many ways of fighting right okay the biggest way to fight or one of the biggest i mean look there are people who run for office and they'll fight here but most people don't run for office it's a very small group of people and not everyone who runs for office is fighting but i i believe for 99 of people the answer is be outspoken do not be afraid to lose friends do not be afraid to be cursed at uh but uh in a sophisticated way you know why prageru was successful there are many reasons but you know what one of the biggest is we're sophisticated we don't say stupid things we don't say lines out of emotion everything is thought through we fight but we fight smart so you you don't write on your facebook page f and then fill in the name of some leftist they do that and they're children we are we are to be adults so put on your facebook page you know i i saw this uh column which provoked me to think about things and you know it could be a column by by i'm only saying someone like me i'm not saying by me i don't care if it's me or someone like me but but a column that makes people think and i'll give you an example uh my column just two weeks ago was colorblind is the ideal the left says colorblind is racist colorblind is the most non-racist possible view every liberal believed in colorblind as the as the goal the left is racist liberals are not conservatives are not colorblind is the ideal your color this actually happened today so i'm walking to my car outside my radio and a guy comes over to me dennis prager happens a lot and i'm very touched by it i have no complaints at all dennis prager i go yes i'm hispanic i'm latino and i love you that's great here's my here's my nephew when i tell him you know it doesn't matter if you don't have white skin you could still be conservative so i looked at this kid it must have been like 19 and i said let me tell you my view the color of your skin doesn't mean an effing and i said the word it wasn't effing doesn't mean an effing thing your skin color is it is less important than your shoe color great to meet you [Laughter] that's that is the antithesis of racism i don't give a damn about your color i truly don't do you give a damn about your own color you look in the mirror and you go oh a white person no you don't you go that you you say your name right i see dennis in the mirror not white so uh this is the this is the battle uh to to be waged you've got to be outspoken gotta come out of the closet what's your third question what is your preferred camera the r5 so let me tell you what i've done in my life in a nutshell because i could talk about any of my hobbies all day ever since i was a kid i bought the most expensive camera i could possibly afford if it meant going without lunch for a month or two not i didn't give a damn i much rather have a great camera than lunch so i i would buy constantly the very best camera from the from certainly from my mid-40s i would buy the best camera made 35 millimeter i couldn't afford a hasselblad and uh and then the new model would come out that was better i kept the box i kept everything sold the the previous one and got the very best and i've done that to this day i now have what i believe is the best uh uh the best digital camera made and uh the r5 of canon and so when they come out with a better r5 model two i will trade in the r5 and do it again uh because i i always want them to have the best camera not the best car that that see that's who you choose what you have to choose in life unless you're rich you can't have the best everything and the best camera is not going to you know set you back well it does i know you looked at me well at your age i didn't afford that either i remember my first one you could look it up it does they don't make cameras anymore yashica that was my camera well you guys have been great it has been a joy meeting you i intend to dance at your weddings i have a one-track mind on that subject just want you to know i want people to get married i do it's very very important for them and for society anyway this has been just riveting it has been a joy having these people on on the program on the fireside chat and i remind you they're all worth watching if you missed yon me park that interview with the north korean escape the woman who escaped that's life-changing and i don't use that term frequently anyway in a sense i want all the fireside chats to be life-changing so thank you for watching otto returned for the very end we thank you otto for your return i'll see you next week thank you for watching this video to keep prageru videos free please consider making a tax deductible donation

Channel: PragerU

Views: 224,658

Keywords: prageru, prager university, CRT, critical race theory, public schools, indoctrination, education system, school system, teachers, students

Id: ol8eWfbhxOE

Length: 68min 38sec (4118 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021