PERSON: Dennis Prager

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host

Dennis Mark Prager (/ˈpreɪɡər/; born August 2, 1948) is an American conservative and nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author, and public speaker.<br> <br> Career<br> <br> Prager left Columbia University without finishing his master’s degree and decided to write an introduction to Judaism with his friend, Telushkin: The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. Published in 1976, it became a bestseller that was popular in all major American Jewish movements.[citation needed] The book was intended for nonobservant Jews. Unlike Telushkin, who became an Orthodox rabbi, Prager abandoned his Orthodoxy as an adult but continues to maintain many traditional Jewish practices.<br> In April 1976, Shlomo Bardin, the founder and director of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, invited Prager to succeed him as the director, and Prager hired Telushkin as education director. Prager remained at the institute until September 1983. During his tenure, he succeeded in influencing many young Jews and built up a cadre of “Prager followers”. He married Janice Adelstein in 1981, and in 1983, they had their son, David.<br> <br> In 1982, KABC (AM) in Los Angeles hired Prager to host a talk show on religion every Sunday night. Prager hosted the show for more than ten years. He and Telushkin published another book in 1983, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism. Later that year, Prager became the Monday-Thursday talk show host for KABC, but he refused to work on Friday night, the beginning of Shabbat. He also wrote a syndicated column for newspapers across the country. In 1985, Prager launched his own quarterly journal, Ultimate Issues, which was renamed to Prager Perspectives in 1996.<br> Since 1999, he has hosted a nationally syndicated talk show from KRLA in Los Angeles and Salem Radio Network. His show has some recurring segments. The “Happiness Hour” is based on his book Happiness Is a Serious Problem and occurs on the second hour of his show on Fridays. Other regular segments are the “Male/Female Hour,” occurring on the second hour of his Wednesday show, and “Ultimate Issues Hour,” which takes place on the third hour of his Tuesday show.<br> In 2017, Prager and comedian Adam Carolla began filming No Safe Spaces, a documentary about political correctness at universities.<br> <br> In 2009, Prager started a website, Prager University, which offers five-minute videos on various subjects, such as the Ten Commandments, the minimum wage, the Middle East, Global warming, and happiness, from a conservative perspective. According to Prager, he created the site to challenge the “unhealthy effect intellectually and morally” of the American higher education system<br> <br> — Wikipedia