Latest news with #Prager
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
PragerU's Plan to Red Pill Our Kids
When Dennis Prager enters the small conference room at his radio station in Los Angeles, he seems to fill up the entire space. He's 6-foot-4 and has a deep, commanding voice that has gained him millions of listeners, even as it retains a slight, old-world Brooklyn accent. It's early fall, and he's wearing a blue striped shirt, a blue tie and dark slacks. He chooses to sit at the head of the table, in front of a glass display case containing awards. This would end up being one of his last interviews before an injury would leave him hospitalized for months, just as his media empire has become more influential than ever and ready to shape the minds of a new generation of potential Republican voters. More from The Hollywood Reporter Music Insiders Slam Live Nation's Trump Ally Board Appointee Amid DOJ Suit: "It's Just So Obvious" How Kristi Noem Could Become the New Jeff Probst Neil Young to Trump on Fight With Bruce Springsteen: "Think About Saving America From the Mess You Made" Prager, 76, has just finished taping an episode of the nationally syndicated Dennis Prager Show, which reportedly has more than 2 million listeners. (This day's episode covered the killing of Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Minnesota's ethnic studies standard under Gov. Tim Walz.) The show is part of Salem Media Group, which owns 95 radio stations and broadcasts Christian and conservative content. Prager has been with Salem since about 2000, after having started on KABC in Los Angeles in the 1980s. The show's tagline: 'When Dennis Prager speaks, America listens.' Prager seems full of contradictions. He's a Jewish person in Christian radio, a conservative in progressive California, a New Yorker on the West Coast and a person who seems surprisingly cheerful despite his outrage on-air. In a typical episode, he rails against topics like legacy media, campus protesters and, of course, Democrats. But off-air, he's happy to talk about classical music and his fountain pen collection. 'I don't collect old ones, I only buy new ones,' he says, lighting up. He removes two from a pocket and places them on the conference table. 'This one is made in Japan, and this one is made in Germany. Our two enemies in World War II make the best stuff.' Though Prager is widely known for radio, younger conservatives and the conservative-curious might instead know him as the co-founder of PragerU. Originally called Prager University, the tax-exempt media organization specializes in five-minute videos promoting 'Judeo-Christian values,' as fundraising materials put it. Its clips have amassed nearly 10 billion views, according to the organization. Key to that success have been high-profile video hosts, aggressive marketing and enlisting Hollywood production talent who, according to PragerU's leadership, are fed up with the industry's wokeness. PragerU has long been controversial, drawing reprimands over the years from the Southern Poverty Law Center, GLAAD, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Human Rights Campaign. Some critics, like Kansas State University researcher Adrienne McCarthy, argue that the organization serves as a gateway to far-right extremism through the values it promotes. Yet the organization has only continued to grow, most recently through kids content becoming available to public schoolers in a rapidly growing list of red states. In PragerU's view, the kids content teaches patriotism and other values that the left has ignored while obsessing over DEI and gender identity. The organization also believes that parents share its concerns about the state of America's classrooms. 'There's an appetite for what we're doing,' says Marissa Streit, PragerU's chief executive officer. 'There is a great awakening for parents and grandparents, where they're realizing that their children are robbed of proper education.' But to opponents, the videos are offensive in how they present everything from slavery to climate change to Black Lives Matter. Beth Lewis of Save Our Schools Arizona argues that teaming up with states gives PragerU a 'veneer of accreditation and credibility' when it is really 'a well-funded, billionaire-backed scheme that sells dangerous disinformation to our students who might not have tools to discern fact from fiction.' (PragerU's donors have included groups tied to the Wilks brothers, who are fracking billionaires, for example.) And she mentioned one video in particular, about Christopher Columbus, that seems to be 'saying slavery is no big deal.' PragerU has responded to such claims on its website, saying, 'PragerU never minimizes the evils of slavery. Our critics choose to either ignore or lie about PragerU's condemnation of slavery as an awful part of American history in these cartoons and many other pieces of content.' Now that Republicans control the White House, Congress and the majority of state legislatures and public education is in their crosshairs, PragerU seems ready to expand its influence even further. It fits comfortably in this current conservative movement to address what's taught in classrooms through legislation, parents' rights groups and, most recently, moving to shutter the U.S. Department of Education. PragerU isn't backing down. 'They call us all kinds of names,' Streit says. 'It's so mind-boggling to me.' *** PragerU content is a lot about doom and gloom, like the urgent need to save Western civilization due to drag queen story hours and illegal immigration. But the mood at the organization's headquarters is lighter. During a recent visit to the offices in Los Angeles —'the belly of the beast,' Streit likes to say — the CEO is wearing a pink blazer with a white top and blue jeans. Her office is bright and spacious, with light hardwood floors, velvety chairs and a conference table. There's also a massive closet, a full-length mirror and a desk with a camera setup near it. A critic once referred to Streit as 'white Christian nationalist Barbie,' a remark Streit reposted on Instagram, pointing out to her followers (she now has more than 100,000, and PragerU has more than 2 million) that she is Jewish and her mother is from Morocco. PragerU has Hollywood roots. The idea came from Allen Estrin, Dennis Prager's radio producer and a screenwriter who has taught at the American Film Institute. The men were on an Indian Ocean cruise around 2009 with listeners of Prager's show when two friends approached Estrin about starting a Prager University, suggesting they 'do something along the lines of Hillsdale,' Estrin recalled in a 2019 'Fireside Chat' PragerU video. (Hillsdale is a Christian college in Michigan that forgoes federal funding to avoid anti-discrimination regulations.) Estrin crunched the numbers and decided it would take too much time and effort. But he liked the idea of doing something educational, so he pitched Prager during the cruise: 'Let's create something on the internet.' Estrin and Prager soon got to work shooting five-minute internet videos, a form then still in its early days. (YouTube launched in 2005.) Making videos wasn't entirely new to them. In 1993, the duo had made a 29-minute comedy short, For Goodness Sake, made up of vignettes focusing on virtue. Airplane!'s David Zucker directed, and the cast included Jason Alexander, Bonnie Hunt, Florence Henderson, Bob Saget, Cindy Williams and Eugene Levy. Zucker also put up money for the project, which they intended to be a series pilot. It eventually aired on Los Angeles public television and was sold as a training video for corporations and schools. (For a 1996 sequel, they enlisted Trey Parker as director and Matt Stone as first assistant director, a year before the debut of South Park.) Even as they focused on videos, the name 'Prager University' stuck. An early version of the website listed video titles as if a course catalog: economics, history, philosophy, political science and religion. The site had an option to 'enroll' and a 'faculty' section. Some states require that an entity be formally approved as a university to call itself one (recall the scrutiny Trump University faced). By 2014, a disclaimer on the site noted it wasn't actually 'an accredited academic institution,' though it remained a nonprofit. In 2011, Prager and Estrin brought on Streit, whom they met through a family she had once tutored in Hebrew. The team still felt Prager University wasn't reaching enough viewers. 'We were violating a basic Hollywood rule,' Estrin said in a 2021 documentary shot by The Daily Wire. 'You need to spend as much on marketing as you do on production.' So they revamped the website. In 2015, they rebranded as PragerU and began thinking of themselves as not just an educational entity but also a media company. Videos became more clicky and provocative, with titles like Why I Left Greenpeace and What They Haven't Told You About Climate Change. They brought in younger talent, too, including Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative student group Turning Point USA. The rebrand worked. A 2015 video, on the virtues of the electoral college (which at that time greatly favored Republicans), went viral, eventually earning more than 66 million views. Themes started to emerge in PragerU content: Police and capitalism were good, socialism and political correctness bad, the effects of climate change were debatable, and gender dysphoria went against biology. Around the time of the 2016 election, PragerU was far from the only expanding right-wing media company, even in Los Angeles, where the Breitbart News Network (then run by Steve Bannon) and Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire also were based. But while other sites focused on the MAGA talking points du jour (think Hillary Clinton's emails), PragerU didn't hitch its wagon to Trump, barely mentioning him during his first administration. For one, as a 501c3, PragerU legally must stay away from political activity. And Prager himself had in 2011 called Trump 'unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president,' though he subsequently wrote in 2016 that voting for Trump over Clinton was 'political chemotherapy needed to prevent our demise.' Anthony Curtis, who worked there as director of major gifts in 2020 and 2021, explains the leadership's thinking as, 'Listen guys, we're not here to engage in the daily controversy. … We have to maintain our credibility.' Still, plenty of political pundits and Trump backers appeared in PragerU videos. These 'presenters' included Kirk, Shapiro, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did a video on courage. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy appeared in multiple videos, as did Pete Hegseth, now the secretary of defense, and Tulsi Gabbard, now the director of national intelligence. From the entertainment world, the list includes the usual who's who of Hollywood's small contingent of outspoken right-wingers, like Zucker, Kirk Cameron, Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Sorbo. Rob Schneider sat for an interview about 'how comedy can help save the West.' Adam Carolla and Drew Pinsky made appearances, too. Such personalities are crucial to PragerU's success, says John Knefel of Media Matters for America, a left-leaning watchdog group. In PragerU clips, the personalities are not as 'overtly frothing' as they might be on their own platforms, he says. 'What is being presented is right-wing propaganda that has this veneer of ideological neutrality, but in fact it's acting as a gateway to enter into these other MAGA fever swamps.' Funding for these star-studded videos came from groups associated with wealthy Republican megadonors, including Dan and Farris Wilks, Sheldon Adelson, Lee Roy Mitchell, Bernard Marcus and Betsy DeVos. PragerU's most recent publicly available tax filing, for fiscal year 2023, listed more than $68 million in revenue, double the amount from just three years earlier. PragerU hit a billion video views in 2017. It took less than four more years to get to 5 billion, in 2021. PragerU decided it was time to expand its audience. *** Streit was born in Los Angeles and moved to Israel when she was young. She served in the Israel Defense Forces and later was director of operations at the Israeli-American Council, a nonprofit that supports Israeli Americans. She says she also taught at and ran a private Jewish K-8 school and has a master's in education. She initially worked for PragerU out of her kitchen. Now the operation consists of about 150 people across two floors in L.A., with offices for marketing and social media and six production studios that turn out upward of 40 pieces of new content each week. Wherever you look, there are American flags and depictions of Abraham Lincoln, Dennis Prager and the Founding Fathers. PragerU also has a smaller office in Florida. The Los Angeles home base has enabled PragerU to recruit from the entertainment industry, which could be why its sleek videos look more Netflix than Cato Institute. 'We get to hire the people that Hollywood repulses,' Streit says. 'If you're a white male in Hollywood, you are actually told that you should shut up and not talk until everybody else that wins victim bingo speaks ahead of you.' PragerU attracts 'people who can't leave California but don't want to be beaten up like that every single day at work,' she says. That's not to say the organization is only white men, she adds. 'There are a lot of people of color who don't want to be in those environments.' PragerU host Xaviaer DuRousseau, whom The New York Times recently profiled as a 'conservative star,' and Amala Ekpunobi, who left PragerU in 2023, are Black. Armed with production talent, and seed funding from venture capitalist David Blumberg, whom Business Insider once profiled under the headline, 'He's gay, believes in God, and voted for Donald Trump,' PragerU Kids launched in 2021. There are now about a dozen shows for three age categories. Otto's Tales, for kindergartners through second graders, is a storytime show in which host Jill Simonian reads books about 'American monuments, holidays and community helpers' over an animated version of the story. Unboxed, USA, for third- to fifth-graders, teaches about state history by having kids open boxes and guess the state based on what's inside. For sixth grade and up, How To purports to teach life skills, like managing money. PragerU's critics argue that even such seemingly nonpartisan content has a conservative bent. Media Matters has argued that the financial literacy series 'Cash Course' mocks taking on student debt to attend a 'big-deal drama school,' which it links to Republican attacks on higher education. PragerU had long tried to connect with educators, but now the country had changed. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that the majority of Republicans said K-12 schools were having a negative effect on the country, while the majority of Democrats said the opposite. In spring 2023, New York magazine counted 71 Republican school bills in 28 states. 'One of the things that unifies all these things is … a very powerful narrative that public schools in America have been taken over by some sort of radical leftist ideology,' says Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University. 'The facts of the matter are, that's just not true.' So when PragerU started courting state education officials for partnerships, those officials likely saw it as a win-win. 'It's low-hanging fruit for an ambitious superintendent in a conservative area to say, 'Hey, look, we have put this on the approved list,' ' Laats says. 'It might look like it has a big impact, even if it has a not measurable and probably not very significant impact.' The shows were already available for free on PragerU's website. But to PragerU, state approval meant teachers could not be punished for using the content, and it could make it easier for teachers to access the resources through official education portals that they used for things like lesson planning and grading. The first state to announce a deal was Florida, then at the center of the curriculum culture wars due to its 2022 'Don't Say Gay' law and the May 2023 expansion of that law. 'Drumroll … PragerU Kids is now an approved curriculum in Florida schools,' PragerU's Simonian said in a live broadcast in July 2023. Next came Oklahoma, followed quickly by New Hampshire, which brought PragerU Kids to a new level by enabling students who took the organization's financial literacy module to get school credit through an existing state program called Learn Everywhere. New Hampshire's education commissioner, Frank Edelblut, tells THR he's aware of the opposition. 'If the students are learning, we don't care where they learn, we just care that they learn,' he says. More states followed: Idaho, South Carolina, Louisiana, Arizona, Montana and Texas. Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said in that state's announcement that he had used PragerU materials as a history teacher. 'You're actually telling history the way it was,' Walters said. 'The left for so long has controlled the narrative.' The scope of the partnerships varies. New Hampshire makes credit available, while Arizona links PragerU content on the state education website. The Texas arrangement is less clear. PragerU announced it was 'now in Texas' and 'on the approved vendor list.' (A Texas Education Agency spokesperson said in a statement, 'Prager U has not been approved by either the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) or the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as an instructional materials provider.') Tom Horne, the Arizona superintendent and a Republican former state attorney general, tells THR he encountered some opposition even in his family. 'My youngest daughter's very liberal,' he says. 'She wrote me, 'How can you put up Prager videos? They're for slavery.' So, I sent her about 10 of their videos that were historical videos, completely objective, there was no ideology in them at all, and I never heard another complaint from her.' While teachers don't have to use the videos, he says, 'I would certainly encourage it.' *** A politically left-leaning high school teacher in deep-red South Carolina, Clifford Lee, learned about the PragerU partnership from the South Carolina Education Association, where he has been a board member. He wrote to the superintendent and his state legislators to voice opposition. He believes the material can't be trusted and that content should teach students to think, not do the thinking for them. 'They hijack my legitimacy, they hijack my relationships that I've had with my students,' he says. He never heard back from the legislators or the superintendent, he says, so he took it upon himself to urge co-workers not to use the videos. 'The stakes are too high to let this go unchallenged,' he says. Lee isn't the only one pushing back. Americans United for Separation of Church and State launched a probe into the Florida and Oklahoma partnerships. In New Hampshire, Cinde Warmington, who was on the state's executive council and ran unsuccessfully in 2024 in the Democratic primary for governor, asked the state attorney general to look into whether PragerU broke the law by calling itself a 'university.' (The AG said it did not.) In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced a resolution urging the state to bar 'edu-tainment children's videos that are discriminatory and anti-Semitic,' citing PragerU. The proposed resolution died. Opponents argue that rather than teach facts, PragerU videos illustrate already-drawn conclusions to spread a problematic agenda. 'It's simply propaganda,' says Kevin Kruse, a Princeton professor of history and director of undergraduate studies. 'PragerU starts with certain conclusions it has and works backward through history to try to cherry-pick evidence that supports this,' he says. 'It's bad-faith motivation, doing bad history, to draw bad conclusions.' Knefel of Media Matters and colleagues watched every PragerU Kids video and released a September 2023 report. Some of the clips they found most troubling came from the animated show Leo & Layla's History Adventures, for elementary schoolers, in which siblings time-travel to meet historical figures. In one they highlighted, a cartoon Booker T. Washington says slavery has 'been a reality everywhere in the world' but that 'America was one of the first places on Earth to outlaw slavery' and 'future generations are never responsible for the sins of the past.' In another clip they found concerning, an animated Christopher Columbus says the place he discovered 'wasn't exactly a paradise of civilization, and the Native people were far from peaceful.' This Columbus adds some tribes were 'vicious, warring cannibals,' that 'being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?' and that, while he's glad the perspective has changed in the future, to 'judge me by your standards from the 21st century' is 'estupido.' The extent to which teachers are actually using the material is unclear. When a Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City reached out to school districts in the state, they generally responded that they were not. In New Hampshire, an education department spokesperson told THR that 19 students have completed PragerU's financial literacy course and received certificates, and 43 were enrolled. The state has about 54,000 public school high school students. Streit says she doesn't have numbers on how many teachers are using the content, and that as 'a freedom junkie,' she doesn't want to be 'hovering over' people. 'I don't think Scholastic tracks every parent and teacher that uses their product, but does that mean that Scholastic is not in the classrooms?' *** On a Tuesday morning in November, exactly a week after the presidential election and a couple of weeks after speaking with THR, Dennis Prager fell at his home and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors determined he had injured his spinal cord, impairing his breathing. The Cedars-Sinai intensive care unit placed him on a ventilator. It was possible he would never walk again, just as PragerU's influence seemed bigger than ever. For months, PragerU has released health updates, including one in February to say that Prager was talking and eating but couldn't move from the shoulders down. In a March video update, his son David Prager, the organization's chief development officer, shared a voice recording from his father that said, 'I intend to go back on the radio.' Soon after, Salem announced he would be back on-air in June, though the company said it had given his old time slot to Charlie Kirk, the past PragerU presenter who has become a leading MAGA-world personality. Then there was a setback. In May, PragerU said Prager had made it home but caught pneumonia and returned to the hospital. 'That was a serious step back,' Estrin said in an update while adding that Prager was again on the path to recovery. Salem delayed his return date and has not given a new one. If Prager returns, he'll do so in an environment that looks different from the one he left in November, one that's arguably more favorable to his cause, but also more crowded than ever. His son said in the March health update that it was not time for complacency. 'People think we're entering this golden age of conservatism,' he said. 'If you don't keep fighting when it's the golden ages, it will come back to the dark ages.' This story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
Time of India
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
F&F styles it out in new brand platform
HighlightsF&F has launched a new brand platform called 'Style It Out', created by the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty and photographed by Alex Prager, aiming to unite its fashion and home collections. The campaign emphasizes the idea that while F&F cannot provide magical solutions to life's challenges, it can offer stylish options to help consumers face those moments with confidence. The promotional campaign includes a suite of three films and extensive advertising across television, out-of-home, print, social media, radio, and digital platforms, managed by EssenceMediaCom. F&F is showcasing its style credentials with the launch of a new brand platform , ' Style It Out '. Created by BBH and shot by photographer and filmmaker, Alex Prager , 'Style It Out' unites F&F's fashion collection with its newly rebranded home range bringing to life a new chapter for the brand's energy and attitude to the brand. BBH were looking to move away from the category tropes that style gave people confidence to better reflect the realities of life for their consumers. The truth is F&F can't give people magical superpowers but they can give them the composure to face life's challenges in style, the press note stated. Toilet roll stuck to your heel. Dress caught in the car door. Tripping up the escalator at rush hour in front of a whole crowd of people. Sometimes life just happens, but you can at least make these moments look good with a killer dress, accessories and a devil may care attitude. Prager brought her signature style of beautifully curated moments in time to the campaign, blurring reality and artifice centred around the female experience to create images that are equally stunning and powerfully relatable. Felipe Serradourada Guimarães, executive creative director at BBH said, 'I've always dreamt of working with Alex (Prager). I've had her book in my office for some time. So when she said yes I knew we had something special. When people of that caliber want to be part of a project you know the work is good.' The platform launched with a suite of three films and OOH and print, and is supported by social, radio and digital activity, all created by BBH. Rachel Nooney, interim marketing director clothing and home at F&F said, 'Bringing home and clothing together under the new F&F brand platform 'Style It Out' helps us to highlight the style and quality that is synonymous with the brand. The campaign brings real-life moments to the forefront in stunning vignettes that we hope many of our customers will relate to.' The campaign will be running for two months nationwide on TVC, VOD, OOH, Print, Social, Radio, Digital with media handled by EssenceMediaCom. Watch the video here: View this post on Instagram A post shared by F&F Clothing (@fandfclothing)
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Dennis Prager sets talk-radio return following a severe spinal cord injury
Dennis Prager, the conservative talk radio host who has been off the air since suffering a debilitating fall in November, will return in June. Prager, whose nationally syndicated show aired locally from noon to 3 p.m. on AM 870 the Answer before his injury, will come back to host the third hour of that time slot starting June 3, Salem Media announced last week. "I'm really feeling much better, as you can hear," the author of "The Rational Bible" said in a voice recording played during a March 7 health-update video featuring son David Prager and Prager University Chief Executive Marissa Streit. "My voice is practically normal, which is really exciting, because I intend to go back on radio. ... And my beloved son — one of my beloved sons — my beloved son David is here with me and I can't tell you how much he has done for me. ... OK everybody, looking forward to being with you often." Read more: Wendy Williams wants 'to move on with my life' despite guardianship: How she got here At the time that recording was played, Dennis Prager was 15 weeks post-injury. Before his fall, he'd had spinal fusion surgery that resulted in a "pretty stiff situation" with his back, Streit said in a Feb. 14 video update. He hit his head when he fell but suffered no brain injury, she said. The spinal cord was another story. "It was not severed, but it was injured, and was injured at the top of his spinal cord, at the area of C3 and C4 that also controls his diaphragm," Streit said, noting that Prager could not move below his shoulders at the time. "He is talking a lot to people in the rehab facility that he's at right now," David Prager, chief development officer for Prager U, said in the same February video. Nonprofit Prager U bills itself as a creator of "free educational content promoting American values." "He's all there. He's 100% there. When you hear him on the radio, you'll say he hasn't skipped a beat." Read more: Beyond Joy Reid: MSNBC makes major schedule changes as it prepares for NBC News split Dennis Prager is still undergoing "extensive" rehab, Salem Media said in its release. "Dennis may have some physical limitations at the moment, but his wit, wisdom, insights and passion are as strong and as clear as ever and we are delighted at his spirit and resolve to return to his audience,' Phil Boyce, Salem's senior vice president of spoken word, said in the release. 'We want Dennis to remain a part of the Salem family and want his millions of loyal fans to continue to hear his voice.' When Prager returns to radio, it won't be on the exact same show that he left. Salem Media announced last week that "The Charlie Kirk Show," hosted by the founder of the conservative Turning Point USA student movement, will take over Prager's affiliate stations — including 870 AM — beginning next Monday. "Affiliates of Charlie will continue to get the Kirk show with no interruption, and affiliates of Dennis will soon get Charlie Kirk as a strong and able replacement," Boyce said in the release. The two men had been broadcasting live at the same time of day before Prager fell. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
24-03-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Dennis Prager sets talk-radio return following a severe spinal cord injury
Dennis Prager, the conservative talk radio host who has been off the air since suffering a debilitating fall in November, will return in June. Prager, whose nationally syndicated show aired locally from noon to 3 p.m. on AM 870 the Answer before his injury, will come back to host the third hour of that time slot starting June 3, Salem Media announced last week. 'I'm really feeling much better, as you can hear,' the author of 'The Rational Bible' said in a voice recording played during a March 7 health-update video featuring son David Prager and Prager University Chief Executive Marissa Streit. 'My voice is practically normal, which is really exciting, because I intend to go back on radio. ... And my beloved son — one of my beloved sons — my beloved son David is here with me and I can't tell you how much he has done for me. ... OK everybody, looking forward to being with you often.' At the time that recording was played, Dennis Prager was 15 weeks post-injury. Before his fall, he'd had spinal fusion surgery that resulted in a 'pretty stiff situation' with his back, Streit said in a Feb. 14 video update. He hit his head when he fell but suffered no brain injury, she said. The spinal cord was another story. 'It was not severed, but it was injured, and was injured at the top of his spinal cord, at the area of C3 and C4 that also controls his diaphragm,' Streit said, noting that Prager could not move below his shoulders at the time. 'He is talking a lot to people in the rehab facility that he's at right now,' David Prager, chief development officer for Prager U, said in the same February video. Nonprofit Prager U bills itself as a creator of 'free educational content promoting American values.' 'He's all there. He's 100% there. When you hear him on the radio, you'll say he hasn't skipped a beat.' Dennis Prager is still undergoing 'extensive' rehab, Salem Media said in its release. 'Dennis may have some physical limitations at the moment, but his wit, wisdom, insights and passion are as strong and as clear as ever and we are delighted at his spirit and resolve to return to his audience,' Phil Boyce, Salem's senior vice president of spoken word, said in the release. 'We want Dennis to remain a part of the Salem family and want his millions of loyal fans to continue to hear his voice.' When Prager returns to radio, it won't be on the exact same show that he left. Salem Media announced last week that 'The Charlie Kirk Show,' hosted by the founder of the conservative Turning Point USA student movement, will take over Prager's affiliate stations — including 870 AM — beginning next Monday. 'Affiliates of Charlie will continue to get the Kirk show with no interruption, and affiliates of Dennis will soon get Charlie Kirk as a strong and able replacement,' Boyce said in the release. The two men had been broadcasting live at the same time of day before Prager fell.
Telegraph
20-02-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
The trick to using retinol in midlife (without damaging your skin)
In this regular series, Ageless Beauty, The Telegraph's beauty experts Annabel Jones and Lisa Armstrong tackle the conundrums they've been searching for answers to, and share their favourite tips and tricks. This week, they discuss how often you should wash your hair. Amidst the thousands of emails we receive on the fashion and beauty desk every week, it was one about retinol from Dr Michael Prager that caught my eye. 'Retinol has been touted as a holy grail of skincare, but I've never been a fan,' wrote Prager. 'True, using retinol can result in a modest increase in skin collagen by a factor of 1.3. However, the side effects far outweigh the benefits: red, sore, flaky skin and extreme light sensitivity.' After using it and going on a Caribbean holiday, Prager returned with dark blotches on his forehead. 'That was the end of my relationship with retinol,' he says. 'While it disperses pigment clusters, it also strips the protective dead cell layer, making your skin vulnerable to damage. This waxen, overly sensitive look is far from what I consider desirable or practical.' That really got me thinking, because someone else I hugely respect in the beauty industry has been saying something similar for years. Alexandra Soveral, the facialist-cum-bio-chemist-cum-mother-of-organic-skincare, sits some way along the beauty continuum from Prager, who rose to prominence as a dispenser of injectables to the A-list. Soveral takes a more holistic approach, believing in the power of massage (hand not mechanical) to give skin a lift, tone and glow. In her 50s, she – and her regular clients – are proof this approach works. If both she and Prager, with more than half a century in skincare between them, are raising questions about retinol, it's time to listen. As a reminder, retinol – and retinal, a stronger formulation – are forms of vitamin A. In moderation, they're a great tool. 'Vitamin A is a powerhouse for skin health, playing a crucial role in cell division, tissue repair, and maintaining the skin's protective barrier,' says Soveral. 'Used in the right amounts, it helps keep skin smooth, firm and resilient by encouraging healthy cell turnover and guarding against environmental damage. 'But,' she continues, 'the skincare industry, alongside dermatologists, have disregarded the safety guidelines and encouraged consumers to overuse retinol.' (That's just changed in the EU, where new legislation has been passed that restricts the use of all forms of vitamin A in skincare products.) The results of overzealous retinol application are all around us, particularly in mid-life and older women: skin looks like parchment. 'Too much retinol accelerates skill cell division in an unhealthy way,' says Soveral, 'leading to issues such as inflammation, acne, rosacea, hypersensitivity and hyperpigmentation. It actually speeds up ageing.' For optimal results, Soveral recommends vitamin A in its most bio-available form, ie (ideally organic) broccoli, sweet potatoes, carrots, leafy greens, fish... and using cold-pressed oils containing vitamin A. Rosehips are a rich source – and there are some reasonably priced options. The Rolls Royce is Soveral's Alpha Water Serum and Delta Lipids Oil. If I could only have two skin care products in my bathroom, it would be these. Designed to be used in tandem, they're highly active but gentle and long-lasting with trace amounts of natural vitamin A. 'Instead of forcing cell division, it will just give them a gentle boost to not become sluggish,' says Soveral. 'In the end, nature knows best.' My first encounter with retinol was in no uncertain terms a car crash. I was in my early 30s and keen to reap the glow-inducing benefits I'd heard (and seen) so much about, but I aborted the mission before the month was up due to an intolerable case of the 'retinol uglies'. The uglies is TikTok lexicon for the settling-in phase of flaky, inflamed skin. Mine was so angry looking, a friend gasped before asking, half jokingly, if I'd contracted an infectious skin disease. I'm told by retinol evangelists that if you stick it out, your complexion repays you with an otherworldly glow. Sadly, I'll never know; I pulled rank for the sake of vanity and steered clear of retinol for the next decade – at least. To be fair this was 20 years ago when retinol formulations were far less sophisticated than they are now. These days retinoids are often delivered in skin-friendly liposomal capsules to minimise irritation and transport the molecule directly where it needs to go. Plus, there are varying retinoids to choose from like the ever-popular retin-A (retinaldehyde) which is deemed a gentler alternative to pure retinol. There isn't a dermatologist I know who doesn't believe in tretinoin, the prescription retinoid that's scientifically proven to have a role in acne and wrinkle reduction. Furthermore, long-term studies have shown that retinoids improve collagen production over time – more collagen, and firmer skin. All in all, the evidence is hard to dispute. That said, I'm often asked to abate the concerns many people have about whether or not to use retinol. So I recently asked the dermatologist Dr Ellie Rashid about whether retinoids do indeed thin the skin. Her response was balanced. It does compromise the top surface of the skin temporarily, hence why SPF and minimal sun exposure is recommended. But, she argued, cell turnover slows considerably with age, thus speeding it up isn't necessarily a bad thing. One could argue it's merely restoring the status quo. If you use the right dose and formulation (she's a fan of CeraVe) for you, the benefits of retinol generally outweigh the cons. Especially if you suffer from hyperpigmentation, fine lines or dullness. I have been using a retinoid cream on my hands and décolletage for the past six months or so, as they have seen more UV rays than I care to admit. Does that make me a fan? As irritating (pardon the pun) as it sounds, I'm still on the fence. I believe retinol has its place. I trust the experts who advocate for it and there's no doubt it works at fading hyperpigmentation and evening out skin tone, so long as you don't overuse it and apply SPF50. But I also think, like with all anti-ageing protocols, that in the end it is a personal choice. If your wrinkles and pigmentation bother you enough to deal with some minor irritation then it's a useful tool alongside a good barrier cream and religious UV protection – especially in winter when the sun is hiding out. I dip in and out, and when I do I use gentle formulations that are slower to work. When it comes to my hands I'm unapologetic. They get a liberal coating every other day – and it's made a visible difference to pigmentation and fine lines. If, however, I could give my teenage self a talking to, the girl who slathered on a coconut-scented SPF8 sun oil with abandon, my advice would be simple: stay out of the sun, apply a good full spectrum SPF daily, mitigate stress, eat well and you won't be debating the pros and cons of anti-ageing protocols decades later. Ask Annabel and Lisa
