Larry Elder's Conversation With Dennis Prager via @SalemNewsChannelTV | PragerU

I told you about the letters I received from an about Dennis Prager and said that she sends him a card get well card every two weeks and she also sent him a good cigar and she wanted me she wanted me to find out whether or not Dennis has received them and I told her that I'd be speaking with Dennis today. She sent another letter and said she heard me read her letter on the air and thank you so much. Please give Dennis my best and find out whether or not he's received my cards and if he received the cigar. So, I had a long conversation with Dennis today. Dennis is in Atlanta. We did it on FaceTime and I will tell you his mood is upbeat. He was cheerful. He laughed at my jokes. He was however quite mindful about his condition and felt that the prospect for him getting a lot better may or may not be great. But either way, he says he's going to adjust to it. And I reminded him of a conversation he and I he and I had two or three days before his injury. I'm in a pretty big studio right here. And to my right is Dennis's studio. The two of us share this big room. And we normally don't cross paths during the week because his show ends several hours before my show begins. But he was doing an interview. And so I entered the big studio and there he was. And Dennis greeted me ausively as he always does. And I said jokingly, "Dennis, are you always this happy?" To which he said, "Larry, it would take an act of Congress for me not to be. I just am tempor temperamentally this way." And I reminded Dennis that on a couple of occasions, I asked Dennis how long he intended to continue and talk radio. And the first time I asked him that was a few years ago. And Dennis looked at me like I had eight heads. And I said, "You don't need to respond. You already gave me your answer by the way you looked. You're going to do it until they have to ply the microphone from your fingers." And Dennis said, "That's right. Don't you feel the same way?" And I said, "No, Dennis, I don't." And he said, "Well, Larry, I tell you what. If ever you decide to retire, I'm going to come to your home and I'm going to drag you out every single day and put you behind the mic if I have to do it myself. You are that important. Dennis told me that as you know, Dennis is a big classical music fan. Dennis said that there are fewer excellent talk show hosts than there are concert v uh violinists who are superb. And he said, "You're in that category." So, I will not sit by and allow you not to do it because you're just tired or you're worn out or what have you. And so, we talked about moods and I said, "Well, I'm up and down in terms of my mood. I've always been that way my whole life. I'm normally upbeat and happy, but there are times where I'm really somber. I'm not quite sure why." I talked to my mom about it one time. My mom said she felt the same way. She said, "Sometimes it's just something very, very minor. Maybe you haven't exercised in a while. Maybe you eaten too much. Normally it doesn't last very long and it just goes away. But my mom said she was the same way. It made me feel better. And um then we started talking about mood and being down and I said my feeling Dennis is that if anybody could handle what happened it's you. I read your book about happiness and you said the key to happiness is gratitude. and I hope you're writing a book about your response to what happened to you. And Dennis said, 'Well, maybe I should. I said, 'My, Dennis, you don't have a choice. You must. It will be your biggest book ever, bigger than all the books you've written about religion. I said the world is waiting to find out how Dennis Prager will deal with this which will inform people and how they deal with their own problems, mishaps, challenges. And Dennis said, "You know, you're right. I I will write it. Coming from you, the suggestion coming from you, I will write it." Dennis asked me what I thought the title should be. I thought about it for a moment and I said the title should be why not me not big bold letters question mark why not me and I said I really can't remember where I got that title but it wasn't original and then later on in the conversation I remembered it and I went back to it. I said Dennis I remember now where I got that. I said you probably don't know who Teddy Pendigrass is. I didn't think Dennis would know and he didn't. Um, I said Teddy Pentagrass is a big R&B singer in the 60s and 70s and he was in a serious car accident and he was paralyzed from the waist down and he was so depressed he became suicidal and Pendergrass said little by little instead of saying why me I began to say to myself why not me that there was no no-fly zone over Teddy Pendigrass just because he was Teddy Pendergrass and my attitude changed. And I I said, "Dennis," he went back to performing in his wheelchair. I believe he even had a couple of hits after that. And then I said, "Well, that's very interesting." He said, "That's very uh very inspiring." And I said that I read an article about a nurse who attended soldiers when they came back from Afghanistan and Iraq, some of them severely injured. And she said she noticed something. The soldiers who were positive, happy, and upbeat eventually regained that same mood after they came to terms with their illnesses or with their challenges. Those who were down, depressive, and negative were down, depressive, and negative after they realized the extent of their injuries and how much or how little they were going to recover. But people that were happy and upbeat eventually became happy and upbeat again. Those who were not retained the same kind of down dark mood. And then I said that's very interesting. And I told him I said this conversation reminds me of something I haven't thought about in a long time. I was studying for the bar examination in Ohio and I didn't take it all that seriously because I thought it was going to be very very easy. I thought after I'd gone to law school, passed all my courses, got some A's, there's no way that a bar exam in Ohio was going to be that difficult. So, I didn't take it all that seriously. And I told Dennis the story of my studying for the Ohio Bar. I will tell you about that when I come back. Getting back to uh the Dennis. So, we were then talking about grateful, gratitude, and periods where you're down. And I told him that when I graduated from law school, I go to work for a big law firm in Cleveland. And you're expected to not only just take, of course, the bar exam, but you're expected to pass it. And if you don't pass it, you'll probably be fired. Now, you as a young associate come in, you work a long hard day, and then you're expected to go to this place where you take a barreview course for another three or four hours. And this goes on for about maybe a month and a half, two months, and then you sit for the bar exam in the capital of Ohio, which is Columbus. So after a long day at work, I would go with the other first year associates at my big law firm. We'd all sit in the same area and listen to people lecture us for 3 hours or so for the bar exam. So I did this for about a week and I said to myself during one of these sessions, I'm out of here. I'm just not going to sit here for this. This is not going to be that difficult. I'm not going to work a hard long day and then come here for three more hours. I'm just not going to do it. So I got up and all the other associates there about about 15 20 of us were shocked that I got up and walked out and I never went back. And then maybe about a month or so later, a few days before the exam, someone contacted me and said, "Larry, they gave us a sample exam and you haven't been coming, so I thought maybe you'd like to see what the exam is going to be like. You can just take it in your house and see how you do." I said, "I appreciate that." So, I took the exam and I flunked it badly. There was so much more material that I didn't know that I didn't expect and I said, "Oh my goodness, I'm not going to pass this exam." So, I spent the next two or three days cramming really hard in by myself to prepare for this exam. I knew that I didn't study enough. I knew the chances of my flunk flunking were really, really high. So, I go to Columbus and I'm worried that I'm not going to pass. It's a three-day exam. So, right before I go downstairs, my hotel to go to the uh place to take the exam, I had the TV on and there was this program, I think it might have been PBS, I'm not sure, about someone named Joy, if I'm recalling correctly. And Joy was in a mental institution and he had real physical deformity and he spoke kind of like this. You couldn't understand anything that he was saying. It turns out he had a perfectly normal IQ. No one knew that because he couldn't speak and people assumed that he was diminished mentally when in fact he wasn't. And in this mental institution, they put him in a room with someone who did have both physical and mental problems. But for some reason, that person was able to understand everything Joy was saying. No one else on the planet could, but this person could. And this person's physical uh challenges were not so bad that he couldn't take one finger and type on a typewriter what Joey was telling him. So Joey dictated a book to this guy who tediously was able to type it one letter at a time and made a book about how Joy was entrapped in this body and unable to speak. So people falsely assumed, including his own parents, that he was mentally diminished when in fact he wasn't. Now this is I saw this right before I went downstairs to get into the car to go take the exam. And I told myself, no matter how this exam turns out, assuming I do flunk it, and even if I get fired from the law firm for having done so, try to have perspective. Try to have gratitude. You're not in a room people assuming that you are mentally deficient when in fact you're not. So no matter how bad things are, no matter how bad the consequences are of you flunking this exam, you are so much better off than this man who courageously typed this book so that other people could be inspired by his plight. Well, fast forward, I passed the exam. I did not fail it. But I remember saying to myself over and over again when I had little moods about what happens if I fail it about Joey. I told this to Dennis and Dennis said that is so incredibly uplifting. And I said, "Dennis, I haven't thought about that in years, probably in at least 20 or 30 years, but you made me think about that." I then mentioned to him about Anne and that Anne had been sending him cards every two weeks and she also sent him a cigar. And Dennis said, "I don't know whether or not I've received it. I haven't been looking at my mail personally, but I will look into it and I'll let you know." Dennis also asked me why I had a suit and tie on, and I said two reasons. I said, "The second reason is that I'm getting ready to do an appearance on television, but more importantly, I remember what you once said about why people should wear suits and ties men should when they go to church because you're expressing your reverence for God and the reverence for how solemn going to church or synagogue is every week." I said, ' That is why I put on a suit and tie to talk with you. And Dennis told me how he was feeling, what his mood was physically, how he felt about his therapy in Atlanta where he is right now. He is one incredible human being. We are blessed to have him. >> For full shows live and on demand, it's Salem News Channel.