In the latest season of The Audit, hosts comedian Dave Anthony and screenwriter Josh Olson team up with The Lever to take on Prager University (aka PragerU), a right-wing propaganda machine masquerading as an online education hub, that’s been slowly creeping its way into the public education system.
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Founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager, PragerU is a far-right media outlet structured as a non-profit educational institution. Primarily distributed through YouTube and Facebook, its slickly-produced videos are carefully crafted to push a reactionary political agenda and promote a regressive vision of society to young people. Here’s a summary of the Audit’s season so far:
Propaganda 101 With PragerU: Insane World History
The season opens with PragerU’s approach to world history and foreign affairs, featuring guest Daniel Bessner, an associate professor of International Studies at the University of Washington and co-host of the American Prestige podcast. The three discuss the organization’s revisionist understanding of topics like the British Empire, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War, and why conservatives rewrite the narrative to dominate today’s culture wars.
Conservative Race Theory
PragerU’s curriculum on racism in America will make your head spin. For this precarious exercise, they brought in writere Aaron Thorpe of the Trillbilly Worker’s Party podcast. They discuss videos on critical race theory, slavery, and reparations, with a clearer understanding of the historical counternarratives that conservatives like Candace Owens propose.
The Kids Are Not Alt Right
The American right’s been obsessed with attacking teachers and public education in recent years. The result is an enormous library of children’s “alternative” educational content. PragerU Kids, a streaming hub of “pro-America” kids programming is intent on battling the evil woke agendas “infiltrating classrooms, culture, and social media.” Betsy Long, a public school educator and union leader in Los Angeles joins for the episode. Long has written about education politics and recently led the successful teachers’ strike to win record-breaking wage increases.
George Washington Was Brave and Tall
From George Washington’s wealth and questionable actions to PragerU’s obsession with the founding fathers’ heights, they unpack the mythologies and oversimplifications that the American Right invests in these historical figures. Jared Yates Sexton is author of The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis and co-host of the Muckrake Podcast. He challenges the traditional narratives we’ve been told about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, including their involvement with slavery and underlying concern with maintaining the power of the wealthy elite.
About Those Evil Communists
There is a surprising topic at the root of PragerU’s curriculum: Karl Marx’s alleged relationship with Satan. Professor Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist and co-founder of the nonprofit Democracy at Work, to discuss the persistent misrepresentations of communism and socialism. Wolff highlights the influence of Marxist ideas on various Christian socialist movements throughout history, the economics of colonialism, systemic racism, toxic masculinity, and critical thinking.
Why Prager U Goes Wild for Bill Maher
Bill Maher, an ostensibly liberal comedian, is astonishingly popular at Prager U. The site regularly uses Maher’s anti-PC video segments as prompts for more hard-line conservative screeds on race, culture, and economics. Gareth Reynolds, a comedian, writer, and co-host of The Dollop podcast joins to discuss why Maher’s rants are a good fit for the site, and how reactionary culture wars fit into a broader conservative ideology.
The Ayn Rand Alliance to End Homelessness
After Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign announcement, the hosts observe that GOP politics are mostly a match-up between manly “right-wing lunatics” against “nerds and dorks.” Despite their differences, all Republican campaigns seem to agree that homelessness in cities is the fault of Democrats, woke liberals, and the unhoused people themselves. PragerU videos reveal how conservative activists are reframing complex social issues like homelessness and addiction into black-and-white talking-points about “compassion brigades” and reductive policy that evades real solutions. Josh Androsky — a Los Angeles-based comedian, organizer and leftist political advisor — joins the fray to scrutinize one (highly dramatic) short documentary produced by a conservative think-tank that aims to reveal the “reality” of LA’s homelessness problem.
What’s next?
Coming up, we’ll have guests like Naomi Klein, Andrew Perez, Katie Halper, Lisa Curry, Will Menaker, Kath Krueger, and Wyatt Cenac on to discuss PragerU’s hold on America and why they’re coming for your kids.
What is The Audit?
The Audit podcast explores conservative propaganda by, of all things, taking online classes. From celebrities’ bootstrap-style self-help guides to informative archconservative docuseries, conservatives have been pushing their ideology into the culture in increasingly nefarious ways — this podcast explores how and why.
