Fifteen years ago, Allen Estrin and Dennis Prager founded an organization called PragerU with the goal of providing easily digestible commonsense ideas to young people. Estrin, producer of “The Dennis Prager Show,” and the namesake Prager struck gold.
Today, PragerU produces five-minute videos and other content that have more than 9 billion views since its founding in 2009. It’s an incredible story.
One of the people most responsible for PragerU’s success is Marissa Streit, CEO of the fast-growing operation. She spoke with The Daily Signal about PragerU’s mission and how it’s transforming lives, one video at a time. A lightly edited transcript is below.
Rob Bluey: Chances are that you’ve watched some of PragerU’s five-minute videos or even subscribe to its popular channel. Here at The Daily Signal, we are big fans of the work that they do, not only because they’re delivering a message to billions of people across the globe, but also educating Americans about important policy issues that we care about.
Marissa Streit is the CEO of PragerU, host of a PragerU show called “Real Talk,” a wife and mother of three. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Marissa Streit: Thanks for having me on. I’m a big fan of The Daily Signal.
Bluey: You’ve had so much success, and congratulations on the reach that you’ve been able to achieve with PragerU. But before we get into the content that you create and the people and the lives that you are influencing, you yourself have an interesting story. Tell us how you found yourself in a position as the CEO and the journey that you took to get there.
Streit: You never know what God has in store for you. I had a whole bunch of random skill sets before I met Dennis Prager. I was an educator for many years. I taught [kindergarten] through eighth grade in California, the belly of the beast. I actually ran a school.
Before that, I was an American that served in the Israeli military, I was part of the intelligence forces there. And I had a background in nonprofit management, I had an MBA in nonprofit management. Like I said, a whole bunch of random skill sets.
And one day, one of Dennis Prager’s friends called me and said, “Do you happen to know somebody with a bunch of random skill sets in education and nonprofit management, and who understands the digital space?”
And I looked around and I said, “Roger, you must be kidding. What do you have in mind?”
That’s how it came about. Dennis Prager, myself, and my random skill sets, and Allen Estrin, who has been the producer of the Dennis Prager radio show. The three of us came together at a café and cooked up this idea of, how do we reach young minds through the power of the internet? And then here we are about 12 years later, we garner about 2 billion views per year.
Bluey: That’s just amazing. Thank you for sharing that story. I do want to come back to certain pieces of it, but let’s talk about Dennis Prager and the vision behind this.
First of all, I should note that Dennis Prager is one of our most popular columnists at The Daily Signal. We love running his pieces and he’s somebody who, obviously, has been a visionary in many regards, but particularly when it came to the idea behind PragerU.
Take us back to that time and why you felt that it was so necessary to have an outlet like this for those young people that you were intending to reach.
Streit: What Dennis has been saying is something similar to what you guys are noticing, and that is, America is not going to be taken down most likely by bullets and tanks. It will be taken down by a war of ideas, by teaching young Americans to basically hate its own country, to believe that the border should be wide open, to believe in Marxist ideas such as intersectionality and class warfare and oppressor or oppress, and all of those really terrible ideas.
And Dennis said that if we don’t find a way to heal young American minds, then America will get sicker and sicker and eventually fall. And we like to say Dennis has medicine for the mind. He’s able to explain these things in very short sound bites but so very clearly. And we realize that nobody has any patience these days, very few are willing to read long books. I think it’s why you guys do such an amazing job with your quick articles where you’re straight to the point.
We tried to do something where we use the power of the internet to explain in short sound bites the ideas that make Western civilization so successful, so prosperous, the ideas that make America what it is today, and then not just make the content but strap a rocket to it.
We would spend a lot of money on marketing these ideas, we put money behind these short videos. And we actually tried to advertise to people who are not necessarily already on our side and get them to think a little bit differently.
The lies that young people are taught, they’re so radical, they’re so extreme that, actually, if you put the truth in their face, then they start thinking deeper and it just opens their minds and you see a complete transformation.
So that was really the vision that Dennis had. He said, “Well, let’s explain these things in short sound bites and let’s strap a rocket to these best ideas and get as many young people to hear them so that we can really save America.”
Bluey: As a parent myself, I can tell you it’s so critically important, particularly with the generation that’s coming of age now, as we know, their whole life has been on the internet. They’re finding information on their own. They’re craving content like what you produce at PragerU.
How do you decide what topics to cover? There are so many different things, whether it’s history or current events, what’s the process like for picking a topic for a five-minute video?
Streit: It’s such a good question. I’ll tell you, 12 years into doing this work, I’m not sure that I can give you a really clear answer on this.
We have a paradigm. Imagine this pie chart, and a portion of the pie chart is we teach what ought to be taught. We really look at what folks are being taught out there and what they’re not being taught. And we produce content so that America is better educated.
An example of that is the Electoral College. We made a video explaining the Electoral College, before the Electoral College was attacked in 2016 in the way that it was. And it was two years before that video actually went viral that we released the video because we just believed that America needs to get educated on this subject. And then later on, it became this very popular question, “What is the point of the Electoral College?”
So a portion of this pie is just us sitting there and saying, “Gosh, what a misunderstood yet very important subject that needs to be taught that people don’t—people don’t understand American history, people don’t understand what America is about. What are some of those nuggets that we can get straight out there into the population so they get educated?”
Another portion of this pie chart is, I hate to say this, but it’s somewhat reactive. There are things that we never imagined that we would have to teach, things that you would think are common sense.
Is there a difference between a male and a female athlete? If you would’ve asked me eight years ago if we’re going to need to make a video on that, I would’ve probably said that you are a little cuckoo. But here we are.
So some of it is just current events, things that we really need to educate the public because we need to give them that intellectual ammunition so that they know how to think straight.
And then the third part of it is, we will come across a brilliant article or a brilliant book. Very often Victor Davis Hanson will just write something so brilliant that we’ll just have to call him up and say, “You got to come in here. We need to turn this book or this article that you have written into a five-minute video and strap a rocket to it.”
So that’s generally the composition of that pie chart behind how we decide our content.
We now make 40 pieces of brand new content every single week. And so it’s not just five-minute videos. We have “Stories of Us,” I have a show, we make kids content for kindergarten all the way through eighth grade. And so it really allows us to plug in additional types of content, given the variety of mediums that we make.
Bluey: And the thing that I find so compelling and effective about your approach is, with so much content available on the internet and video content in particular, you have found a way to make it interesting and to convey sometimes wonky topics, like the Electoral College, in ways that young people are able to understand them and it holds their interest—we know that everybody has a short attention span. And so that’s another point that I think is very effective about the videos that you’re creating.
You mentioned there that you are increasingly focused on educating younger people, and we’ve had Jill Simonian from your organization on this program a couple of times in the past. Tell us about those efforts and in particular, why the K-12 focus is so important to your efforts these days.
Streit: I’ll let you in on a little bit of a personal secret. For about 10 years, people kept asking us to make videos for kids. I’m a former educator, I have three kids under the age of 11. Obviously, this issue is close to my heart, but I was really afraid to tap into that market because who competes against Disney and Nickelodeon or PBS?
It was a scary arena for us to figure out how to make entertaining content that’s educational, we call it edutainment. And during the lockdowns, I just felt I had to step into it. I was like, “I don’t care how scary it is. I may succeed, I may fail, but I must at least try.”
So about two years ago, we launched PragerU Kids and started producing this kids content, which ranges anything from financial literacy to entrepreneurship, all the way through history, civics. And we’re even looking into teaching basic reading because we’re seeing these abysmal rates of young kids that don’t know how to read.
Last summer, we started speaking to some families across the country who have said, “We would love to see PragerU Kids content in schools.”
Our kids are watching videos in schools but it’s not the good kinds of videos, it’s the Cheetos for the brain instead of the broccoli for the brain. And so how do we get good, wholesome, clean content that doesn’t sexualize our children or doesn’t teach them that America’s this terrible place? How do we get PragerU Kids content into schools so that not only the parents can use the content at home but the teachers can have this turnkey content in schools?
And again, we just kept doing what we thought was impossible. I really thought it would be impossible to get PragerU Kids content into public schools. Pretty amazing.
And it started in Florida, where the superintendent of Florida—in my team, we had a meeting and we discussed how we create this partnership and make the content available for Floridians. And from there, it expanded to New Hampshire, Montana. And so I think that we just need to keep dreaming big because our kids deserve it.
Bluey: They certainly do. And I think that, again, if you look at the quality of the material that you’re producing—and I say this as a parent and somebody who follows closely what my kids consume in school—nothing really matches it. And frankly, the other information that they’re seeing or hearing is in many cases inferior or presenting things in such a light that, as a patriotic American, you don’t want them necessarily to be seeing.
But Marissa, let me ask you this, you as well as us at The Daily Signal have seen, as your reach has increased, the attacks and the criticism mount as well. There’s a particular organization called NewsGuard. There are others that have taken aim at the work that we do in order to try to bring us down a notch. How have you responded to some of those critics, particularly those who don’t want to see your content in schools, and what is your response to them?
Streit: They’re clearly intimidated by us because we’re obviously making incredible headway. One of our biggest attackers are the teachers unions. They want to claim that we hate all teachers, which is absolutely ridiculous. I’m a former educator myself, we have many teachers that work here at PragerU.
But their attacks are so bogus and so ridiculous, one has to even wonder how to react to those kinds of bogus attacks, and really just realize that they’re just intimidated by us.
There’s an entire news segment that was made about how terrible PragerU is because we have a video that teaches how to make a Christmas ornament, and we encourage young kids to go ahead and celebrate Christmas and say “Merry Christmas” to their friends.
It’s like, “Really? Really? That’s what you’re attacking? You don’t care about the pornography in schools and all the [critical race theory] and [diversity, equity, and inclusion] stuff in schools. And [why] you’re really attacking PragerU is because we’re teaching young children how to love Christmas and make a Christmas ornament.”
Those examples go on and on. And so, frankly, when the attacks are so bogus and so ridiculous, they just charge us further. They give us free publicity. I think that the audience watches it and says, “This is absolutely ridiculous. I want to see what’s actually going on.”
And then they go to PragerU, they visit our website, and they actually find a lot of stuff that they love. I’ll say they’ll find stuff that they disagree with sometimes, but that’s OK too. That’s good for people’s brains.
Bluey: That’s right. We should want that free inquiry and allowing them to have the freedom to choose the content that they want. We approach it much the same way. We wear it as a badge of honor. We know that if we’re taking flack, we’re probably over the target and doing something right. That is certainly something to be mindful of, annoying as much as it is.
Marissa, tell us about some of the most popular content that you’ve produced in your time at PragerU. Are there particular videos that stand out in your mind that year after year consistently have strong interest and attention?
Streit: Our five-minute videos are our bread and butter. It’s what we’re known for. Our most recent enterprise, PragerU Kids, has been very exciting because we’re having an impact on the next generation.
This month, we’re releasing a new show called “The Hustle,” which I’m very passionate about, not just because it’s new but because it teaches entrepreneurship. I think it revives the entrepreneurial spirit in America. We want young kids to grow up working for themselves, innovating, starting new things.
And so this show is for sixth graders and it’s inspiring in that it shows these other young Americans who have started their own businesses and hustled, but it also teaches some tangible business advice. What is an invoice? What is a vendor?
And many of those things are actually topics that you would probably learn in business school. And I don’t see any reason why a sixth grader can’t tap into that as well.
I absolutely love that show because I think it’s super entertaining. And people ask me all the time, why do we do our work out of the belly of the beast here in California? Why are we not leaving? And I think when people watch that show, there’ll be an aha moment, where you realize that there’s something very cool about the fact that we can steal the great employees that used to work for Disney and Nickelodeon and are sick of being treated like pariahs. And so they come and work for us and produce this amazing edutainment. And so I’m super excited about that next show.
Bluey: You have also found yourself, like us, in a situation where sometimes the Big Tech censors come by and want to restrict content. What advice do you have or what can we do, what can our listeners do to provide support for you, particularly in a time when it seems that there are, as you mentioned earlier, people who want to restrict the ability to even watch the content that you’re creating?
Streit: We’re reliant on the conveniences that Big Tech offers us. It’s so convenient to consume all our content on YouTube or, let’s say, on Facebook or Instagram. We’re so reliant on it, but with that reliance, we’re losing some of our personal freedoms because they get to choose what we’re going to watch.
And so my first piece of advice is, if you don’t want to be at the mercy of what Big Tech decides that you should consume, you should really directly go and follow the content creators that you like, not on social media. If they have an email list—we have an email list—go ahead and subscribe.
We have an app, download the PragerU app. If you don’t watch our content directly on our own platforms, on our own website or our own app, you’re really at the mercy of the decisions of these Big Tech companies.
And you see that that’s what NewsGuard is pretty much reliant on. They want there to be a few very large monopolies in the Big Tech industry, and they want to take out any competition so that they can control the vehicles of communication.
So, how do we fight that? By actually diffusing these tech monopolies, and follow your favorite content creators directly so that we can communicate with one another without their permission.
Bluey: That’s right. And in your case, you can subscribe to PragerU, as you said, download the app, but you can also become a member of PragerU. Can you share with our listeners about that opportunity as well?
Streit: We have multiple membership opportunities. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so we don’t take any ad dollars. And that’s why there’s no DEI or CRT or [environmental, social, and governance], or any of those horrible letters here. And we have donor clubs with all kinds of opportunities for people to access.
We have an email subscribership list. If you are a parent or an educator and you’re particularly interested in kids’ content, you can subscribe to those lists. And we really try to make lists that are available for people based on what they’re looking for.
So I encourage people to go to our website. A real great start is to download our app because you’ll have a really good sense of what is available and the app will also be able to identify where your interests are so that we can properly serve you with content that you enjoy.
Bluey: I highly encourage our audience to do that. Marissa, a question for you, you mentioned earlier your work prior to PragerU with the [Israel Defense Forces]. Obviously, for the last couple of months that’s been a big focus of our attention here at The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation and also across the globe of just individuals who are following what’s happening in that part of the world.
Can you share with us, from your perspective, things that we should keep in mind? And from your own knowledge of serving, what it was like?
Streit: When I think about the lessons that I learned through this opportunity as an American to serve in the Israeli military, one of the lessons that struck me the most is the fact that everybody in Israel serves. And so everybody understands how important it is that their country has security, sovereignty, and the ability to protect itself. And I think Americans should think about America in that way too.
Our education system is so focused on teaching us multiculturalism that the word patriotism has become a pejorative, a negative word. And it should not be.
I think every person needs to figure out what is a way in which they and their family can enlist in saving America. It may not be in the military, you might be able to enlist in saving America by sharing information, by making sure that you raise kids who are knowledgeable, by buying American products.
But I think that having the consciousness of protecting your own country is very important. And I learned that from Israel because Israel absolutely has to. But I think that we’re getting to a point where America and Americans absolutely have to start thinking about, how do we protect our own nation?
We have porous borders and people might get a little upset about it, but are they doing enough to protect our borders? When you have immigrants from all over the world, who knows what they’re coming in with? We’re seeing the fentanyl rates.
I think this is a lesson to learn from this tiny country in the Middle East, and that is, we need to protect our home. We need to protect our homeland. We need to figure out a way to enlist.
And it may not mean that you are actually in the military, but it should mean something. Maybe you’re on a school board, maybe you are part of a community watch. There’s so many other ways but I think that just sticking our head in the sand and doing nothing is no longer an option for Americans.
Bluey: That is a great call to action. And as we’re all thinking about our New Year’s resolutions and goals for 2024, I wholeheartedly endorse what you’re saying and encourage our listeners to do that.
Marissa, a final question for you. As I mentioned earlier, you are the host of your own show called “Real Talk.” It has a popular following. Tell us a little bit about it and why we should tune in.
Streit: I realized that one of the fun things that I get to do here is meet incredible people that come through the doors of PragerU. Whether they come into one of our studios for a documentary or for a five-minute video, or just even to visit, oftentimes they have very interesting things to say and I found myself sitting with them for a couple of hours. And one day I said, “How about we just turn on the cameras? Because the world needs to hear what you have to say.”
And so my show airs twice a month, and it’s usually either interviews with business leaders, people who love America and want to protect America, and a lot of it has to do with the issue of education and just how to save our children.
For anybody who is interested, and it’s a plethora of different options, but it’s entrepreneurship and education, you can follow my show on our website. It’s also available on YouTube and on Spotify and everywhere else where you can find podcasts. It’s about an hour long and it’s just a real authentic conversation about the state of our country and oftentimes issues relating to our country from around the world.
Bluey: We’ll be sure to leave a link for all of our listeners to easily subscribe and encourage them to do so. Thank you for doing it. And again, thank you for everything that you do at PragerU. What an incredible operation, the amount of content that you’re producing on a weekly basis is just phenomenal.
And I think, again, as parents or grandparents or whatever situation in life you might be, it’s really important that we have our youth, in particular—whether they’re in elementary school, middle school, high school, or college—have access to this valuable information.
Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, thank you so much.
Streit: Thank you, it was a great pleasure.
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