If we鈥檙e trying to understand our era, we need to recognize the following: mainstream institutions and their various consensuses are being replaced by fringe alternatives. In the United States right now, mainstream science and education are being levelled to make way for replacements, and because ideas are not contained by geopolitical borders, this institutionalization of bad ideas can affect us all.
Take PragerU, for instance. spread that the recent defunding of the corporation that funds PBS and NPR would give PragerU a chance to replace them. Indeed, PragerU is already partnered with a number of states so that their material can be used in classrooms, and the organization recently added to this list the White House itself, collaborating on an official exhibit featuring of Founding Father John Adams parroting a modern conservative catchphrase: 鈥淔acts do not care about our feelings.鈥�
Even if PragerU is not fully institutionalized by the Trump White House, we should be worried about what it is teaching both adults and children about science.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
The name itself is illustrative of what it is trying to do: PragerU is not a university, yet it clothes itself in its garbs. The small print at the bottom of its website confesses that 鈥渨e don鈥檛 offer degrees, but we do provide educational, entertaining, pro-American videos for every age.鈥� PragerU is a charitable organization co-founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager and an obscure screenwriter whose most famous credit might be on the screenplay to the straight-to-video Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World.
The front page of its sports a Bible quote, reminding us that promoting Judeo-Christian values is top of mind at PragerU, and the report itself claims millions of views of PragerU content every day. Its estimated 2024 year-end budget was USD 72 million.
This money is used to craft live-action and animated videos and documentaries to indoctrinate their viewers, and while history and politics are their bread and butter, science and medicine also get ingested and transformed by PragerU鈥檚 motivated metabolism.
Their short documentary, , helps its viewers dismiss climate change. Jacki Deason, a lawyer and podcaster with an interest in energy production, repeatedly accuses the environmental movement of asking us to 鈥渟ubmit,鈥� while Michael Shellenberger makes a whopping statement: that there鈥檚 no predictions of increasing deaths from natural disasters or diseases from climate change in any of the serious literature, including the IPCC report. People are surprised by that, he says. I was too. The , which he would have access to when the documentary was shot in 2020, states, 鈥淗ealth impacts include greater likelihood of injury and death due to more intense heat waves and fires.鈥� Shellenberger has made a lucrative career out of denying the reality of climate change, but with outright falsehoods like this, the case he鈥檚 building is so flimsy it might get burned down in one of our increasing forest fires.
Oppositional reflex
PragerU is the perfect platform for contrarians to drop the pretense that the mainstream might be right about some things and to go mask off instead. swings by to be interviewed by the president of PragerU, who states that 鈥渙ur schools are run by the enemies of America.鈥� Atlas, for his part, comments on the state of the COVID-19 response before he joined the White House coronavirus task force in mid-2020: 鈥淭he President of the United States was being fed completely wrong information from [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and [Dr. Deborah] Birx.鈥� Luckily, Atlas was there to be the fly in the ointment, repeating 鈥淚 totally disagree鈥� over and over again at multiple meetings, downplaying the severity of the pandemic.
Another COVID minimizer, , gets the PragerU interview treatment, where a rebel is introduced as the next Galileo and the interviewer titters about the imagined censorship to follow. In this September 2024 conversation, Makary says, 鈥淚 stay out of politics.鈥� A few months later, he would be sitting in front of a senate committee to ultimately be confirmed as Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
His interview on PragerU (view count: 3.4 million) is filled with preposterous falsehoods meant to reveal him to be a singular freethinker who asks questions no one has dared to ask before. On the topic of diabetes鈥攁nd keep in mind that he is a doctor who specializes in a surgical intervention for type 1 diabetes鈥攈e boldly states that diabetics are simply given insulin and that no one tells them to try lowering their sugar levels by watching what they eat. Has he been living under a rock for most of his life? Earlier, he rhetorically asked how to even teach ethics to doctors in training. The interviewer turned the question back at him: 鈥淎re they even taught these things?鈥� His incredible answer? 鈥淚鈥檓 not aware of it.鈥� The School of Medicine at his own university, Johns Hopkins, has for its medical students literally called 鈥淔oundations of Public Health: Epidemiology, Ethics & Health Care.鈥� To claim that medical students are not taught ethics is either a gonzo lie or a sign of a disqualifying lack of knowledge.
But this desire to be perceived as atypical and trailblazing can really shield you from your own contradictions. During the interview, Makary complains that when he wanted to join the National Academy of Medicine, there was a box he could check if his work focused on the climate鈥檚 impact on health. He calls it 鈥減osturing,鈥� while the interviewer dubs it an unwarranted pledge of allegiance to environmentalism. What is stunning is that twenty minutes earlier, Makary had spoken fondly of his father, a hematologist, who had noticed an association between a rare type of leukemia in the area where they lived and the smoke coming out of local mine fires. In order words, the climate鈥檚 impact on health. It鈥檚 just easier for Makary to blame ill health on pesticides, seed oils, and American ketchup (he calls it 鈥減oison鈥� because of the high-fructose corn syrup), as he does on PragerU鈥檚 channel, than attempt intellectual consistency.
It's worth reiterating that this man is now the head of the Food and Drug Administration. When catastrophizing that 鈥渆very kid is now on insulin鈥� and isn鈥檛 taught to eat properly, he pithily remarks that the 鈥淔鈥� in 鈥淔DA鈥� stands for 鈥渇ood.鈥� I guess he forgot what the 鈥淒鈥� stands for.
Of course, platforming fringe doctors is not enough for PragerU when naturopathy is right there, begging for airtime. is the founding president of Bastyr University, the premium naturopathy school in the United States, and he gets an hour to steer the PragerU president away from conventional medicine and remind her that health should be a personal responsibility. The multiple camera angles, professional lighting, and impeccable audio come together to elevate what is in fact a collection of prescientific and disproven health philosophies, like homeopathy and detox. Pizzorno recommends low-potency (meaning not as diluted) homeopathic sugar pills for ear infections in kids and a third of these cases on a dairy allergy. He says most people have a leaky gut (not true) and that the best thing you can do to prevent cancer is load yourself up with zinc and vitamins A, C, and D. Like so many libertarian health quacks, Pizzorno reveals that he is working on an artificial intelligence that will act as your own naturopath. The platform is called Santorio and its website is , blurring the line between fact and fiction, much like PragerU itself.
This fetishization of the subversive鈥攖he next Galileo, or Einstein, or Tesla鈥攊s something PragerU is intent on teaching not just to adults but to kids as well.
It takes a village of contrarians to raise a child
Among the many productions of PragerU Kids is the animated series , in which the siblings use an app to travel through time and talk to famous figures, including inventors and scientists. There鈥檚 a theme that runs through most of them: that those who changed the world were religiously-motivated radical thinkers, disbelieved or even harassed by the people around them but who were ultimately proven right. This is a dog whistle to the Galileo gambit, where a person claims that just because their idea is being laughed at, it will necessarily be shown to be true.
In fact, Leo and Layla do meet Galileo in subtitled 鈥淭he Scientist Who Dared to Question,鈥� and they end up going back to the present day, sitting in front of the television, and hearing the announcer say the following: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 right, Bob. Government officials are telling Americans who have questions not to worry. Everyone just needs to follow the steps they鈥檝e been given and trust the science.鈥� The kids reply with a skeptical, 鈥淗mm.鈥� The video was published at the end of 2021.
PragerU Kids鈥� portrayal of science is of a morass that can only be shaken up by a rebel who adopts a contrarian attitude. Hence, the COVID-19 science should be ignored because it came from government officials and scientific bodies鈥攖he mainstream鈥攚hile the real truth-tellers were the Marty Makarys bravely stating the exact opposite.
It is true that science has, in the past, moved in leaps and bounds thanks to the observations and interpretations of some very smart people, including Copernicus, Faraday, and Curie, all portrayed on PragerU Kids鈥� show. But science is much more likely to advance incrementally鈥攚ith small additions to a large body of knowledge鈥攖han in sexy revolutions, and these advances tend to be done by teams of people working together, not lone geniuses. The problem is that this communal reality is at loggerheads with PragerU鈥檚 desire to baptize new mavericks.
Other PragerU Kids videos fictionalize life in foreign countries to remind viewers of how star-spangledly awesome America truly is. In children are taught that Canada鈥檚 public healthcare system is terrible: wait times lead to unnecessary deaths and innovation is difficult because of taxes and regulation. In the U.S., 鈥渢he quality of care is among the highest in the world.鈥� Funnily enough, the parents of the children watching this will be told by Dr. Makary on the same website that the U.S. healthcare system is predatory and full of greedy doctors, and that they should be very skeptical of it.
An taking place in Poland warns of the dangers of banning coal and indoctrinates children into thinking that renewable energy is 鈥渦nreliable, expensive, and difficult to store.鈥� If only PragerU Kids had made multiple videos in which fictional siblings talk to inventors about the importance of thinking outside the box and of turning setbacks into achievable challenges鈥攍et鈥檚 say a video about how couldn鈥檛 work as a telegrapher anymore because of his deafness but he ended up working on light bulbs instead. Then, renewables might be framed as opportunities for scientific triumph. I鈥檓 sure none of this has anything to do with fracking billionaires .
In a live-action, SciShow-wannabe about scientific revolutions, the PragerU hosts conclude by asking the viewers to think about why it鈥檚 important to question what you鈥檙e taught. Indeed, this question is particularly salient when watching so-called educational material from a conservative propaganda outlet subtly masquerading as a university.
Take-home message:
- PragerU is a charitable organization focused on creating conservative, religiously motivated, pro-American media, including interviews aimed at adults and animated videos targeting children
- When its content focuses on science and medicine, it often celebrates contrarians, equating Galileo being right about the Earth not being the centre of our universe with fringe doctors disbelieving the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic
- PragerU promotes pseudosciences like naturopathy as well as climate change denialism, and its content is full of obvious contradictions and people claiming they were the first to ask a question that is actually very common
