The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast

On May 7, 1943, as World War II raged across the globe, Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead was published in America. Due to sparse reviews and minimal publicity, sales were initially low. Then an unusual thing happened, paralleling Rand’s description of the gradual success of the novel’s hero, Howard Roark: “It was as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places.” As word-of-mouth readership spread, Rand’s novel began appearing on best-seller lists more than a year after publication. By May 1945 it was #1 on the Los Angeles Times local best-seller list, and by August it reached #6 on the New York Times national best-seller list, remaining on that list (with few interruptions) until March 1946. In this episode, we read aloud Tom Bowden's article, “The Illustrated Fountainhead: Serializing a Classic Novel.” In that essay, he describes how Ayn Rand welcomed a newspaper syndicate's offer to popularize her best-selling novel in illustrated form. Bowden’s article was originally published in New Ideal on October 12, 2022. Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Don Watkins and Nikos Sotirakopoulos discuss New Year’s resolutions, what makes them difficult to maintain, and how integrated, contextual thinking can help automatize good habits. Among the topics covered: The unhealthy motivation of the “fresh start effect” vs. healthy motivations for resolutions; Why the fact of automatization makes change both desirable and challenging; Why a clear, first-handed purpose is necessary for sticking with goals; The fatal error of oscillating between “all-or-nothing” perfectionism and “I’ll do it when I feel like it” subjectivism; How to learn from resolution failures; Framing your resolutions as aspirations for the life you want to live and the person you want to be; How setting goals about outcomes, processes, and themes are interrelated; How choosing detailed resolution goals in the context of the possibility of failure helps to strategize for success. Mentioned in the discussion are Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear; How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, and The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand. This episode was recorded on December 29, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjE9oAqG5HQ Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss two recent news stories: Elon Musk's controversial management of Twitter and Brittney Griner's return from captivity in Russia. They first analyze what Musk's management and its public reception foretells for the future of freedom of speech in America; they then examine what the Biden administration’s deal to secure Griner’s freedom by releasing Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer, reveals about our foreign policy. Among the topics covered: Why Musk is not a true free speech absolutist; How Musk and his critics falsely view content moderation issues as being about free speech; How Musk's erratic policy changes show that he underestimates the difficulty of implementing content policies; Why it’s wrong to think of the Twitter Files controversy as being about transparency; What Musk’s conduct regarding China reveals about his commitment to free speech; The unsubstantiated claim that Musk embodies Ayn Rand’s egoism; Why the U.S. government should not negotiate with the corrupt, non-objective Russian government to secure the release of Americans who risk traveling there; How the government’s lack of a rational foreign policy towards Russia misleads Western citizens and companies; The fact that many people’s reactions focused on Griner's race or politics rather than asking why she even worked in Russia; How both these stories highlight the need for principled thought about the government's role and its limits. The podcast was recorded on December 20,2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here. https://youtu.be/oUXjq6SWXBI Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Elan Journo discuss the philosophical bankruptcy of effective altruism and the movement’s role in FTX’s financial collapse. Among the topics covered: The connection between FTX’s financial collapse and the effective altruism movement, including CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s goal of “earning to give”; What effective altruism advocates and why its offshoot, “longtermism,” champions some unusual causes; Why some of the common criticisms of effective altruism, such as the idea that it is a cynical ploy or that it is Utopian, miss the mark; The real problem with effective altruism, as shown by some of its major advocates, as its demand for self-effacement and sacrifice; How even secular altruists approach morality like a religion; How effective altruism is a form of debased morality, which empties morality of meaningful guidance relevant to our everyday lives; How a rational morality can be grounded in observable facts, not intuitions. Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s article “Moral Inflation,” published in The Ayn Rand Letter, and our episode of New Ideal Live, “Why MacAskill is Wrong about What We Owe the Future.” This episode was recorded on December 16, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch previous episodes here. https://youtu.be/LeWuJMO5jSg Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Agustina Vergara Cid and Nikos Sotirakopoulos explain how authoritarian states such as Qatar use international sporting events like the World Cup to launder their reputations. They argue that this practice of “sportswashing” and organizations, like FIFA, who enable it, should be condemned for aiding authoritarian states in their bid for moral legitimacy. Among the topics covered: How authoritarian Qatar won the World Cup bid; Qatar’s unprecedented World Cup spending; Qatar’s abysmal treatment of migrant workers, women, the LBGT community and its overall lack of rights and freedom; “Sportswashing” as reputation laundering with a long history; Why the call to keep politics out of sports shields authoritarian nations from criticism; “Sportswashing” as trading on a false moral equivalence; The need to end appeasement of authoritarian states and for fans to condemn “sportswashing”; FIFA’s moral culpability for aiding and abetting authoritarian regimes. Mentioned in this podcast and relevant to the discussion are the entries on moral judgment in the Ayn Rand Lexicon and Agustina Vergara Cid’s article  “Qatar's hosting of the FIFA World Cup is a bigger problem than you think” in the Orange County Register. The podcast was recorded on December 8, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here. https://youtu.be/Tquo_o8zSlI Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Dr. Amesh Adalja discuss the ethics of infectious disease and evaluate the continued push for stringent paternalistic measures to combat Covid, including the Chinese government’s push for “Zero Covid.” Among the topics covered: Why Covid is now endemic, not a pandemic; How an individualized harm reduction framework can help us navigate a world in which infectious disease is an inescapable fact; The egalitarian moral ideal behind prominent arguments for paternalistic measures such as mask mandates; Why egalitarianism is wrong; The ideas motivating China’s push for “Zero Covid”; The flawed approach towards pandemic preparedness motivated by effective altruism; The roles of vaccines and natural immunity in bringing about widespread immunity to Covid. Mentioned in the discussion are Dr. Adalja’s article “The Pernicious Folly of Pursuing Zero Covid,” his talk “COVID-19, mRNA and the Future of Vaccines,” and Onkar Ghate’s essay “A Pro-Freedom Approach to Infectious Disease.” This episode was recorded on November 30, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch previous episodes here. https://youtu.be/47WOdN55k4M Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer interviews professor and clinical psychologist Gena Gorlin about the value of gratitude, possible misconceptions about it, and how it’s being understood and implemented in psychology and psychotherapy. Among the topics covered: Gratitude and its role in psychological exercises within the gratitude movement; Whether these kinds of exercises are useful and valuable; How the psychological benefits of gratitude exercises depend on a purposeful orientation towards values; Why it’s important to distinguish the good that comes from others from natural goods, such as a sunny day; Why the difference between gratitude, humility and pride in one’s own achievements is important; Whether there’s a point at which it’s proper to stop expressing gratitude and start feeling angry about what’s bad or unjust in life; The importance of acknowledging and learning from the achievements of others—including business entrepreneurs, which we benefit from; How some entrepreneurs internalize the culture’s unjust attitude towards them and fail to appreciate what’s good in them; Why we need to understand that gratitude is ultimately selfish. Mentioned in this podcast are Ayn Rand’s novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Also mentioned is Matt Bateman’s essay “A Pedagogy of Gratitude.” The podcast was recorded on November 23, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here. https://youtu.be/pULLJLqbD4E Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Aaron Smith and Mike Mazza discuss World Philosophy Day to explore what is the nature and value of philosophy. They address how philosophy is commonly perceived (especially within academia) as a useless field and how Ayn Rand's distinctive conception offers a deeper and more practical perspective that matters for life. Among the topics covered: What philosophy is and the kind of questions it addresses; How people operate philosophically even when lacking a systematic outlook; Ayn Rand’s take on philosophy as inescapable and life-impacting; How contrasting philosophical worldviews produce different ways of living; Ayn Rand’s view on the practical guidance that philosophy offers; The problems with Bertrand Russel’s influential view of philosophy; Why academic philosophy has failed to defend the value of its field; How religion makes people unaware of secular philosophical worldviews; Objectivism’s integration of method and content. Recommended in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s book Philosophy: Who Needs It and Onkar Ghate’s article “Let’s Revive Philosophy.” The podcast was recorded on November 16, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here. https://youtu.be/AdH8Yy0NC5c Podcast audio:

The international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been extraordinary. Rarely have so many nations united so quickly to impose such heavy economic and diplomatic sanctions on Russia. Even Switzerland, a byword for studied neutrality, saw fit to levy sanctions on Putin’s regime. Millions of Ukrainians who fled their homes have been welcomed as refugees in Europe. The sympathy for them, and for those who remain under Russian bombardment, has been widespread (with American schoolchildren mailing small toys, crayons, and stuffed animals to comfort Ukrainian kids displaced from their homes). From across the globe, military aid to Ukraine has poured in. Underlying this reaction is an unspoken, in many cases impressionistic, recognition that Russia is the aggressor. But one prominent intellectual, Professor John Mearsheimer, argues that we’ve got it all wrong. In this episode, we read aloud Elan Journo's article, “Why John Mearsheimer Gets Ukraine Wrong.” In that essay, he argues that Mearsheimer's "realist" take on Russian invasion on Ukraine is an object lesson in the destructiveness of amoralism. Journo’s article was originally published in New Ideal on September 14, 2022. Podcast audio:

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the midterm elections and offer a philosophical analysis of the state of American politics. Among the topics covered: The value of analyzing the midterms from a long-term, philosophical perspective;Why the results in Georgia are an encouraging sign about the mindset of independent voters;The absence of long-term policy visions on key issues such as pandemic preparedness, inflation, and foreign policy;How today’s intellectual vacuum represents a degeneration compared to 1980s, 1990s and 2000s;The fact that today’s politicians don’t feel the need to even attempt to formulate policies;How the increasingly short-term, concrete-bound and tribal nature of American politics affects citizens’ ability to regard government officials as their representatives;How American politics became so intellectually empty;How religionists and democratic socialists are related to the anti-intellectual trend;Why voters generally have better views than many of today’s candidates;The importance of supporting better candidates when they come along. Mentioned in the discussion are Ayn Rand’s lecture “The Age of Mediocrity,” Ben Bayer’s book Why the Right to Abortion Is Sacrosanct, and Onkar Ghate’s article “One Small Step for Dictatorship.” This episode was recorded on November 10, 2022. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch previous episodes here.     https://youtu.be/9vb1UYM7LFo Podcast audio: