Know Your Enemy3 Helmi 2025

Ayn Rand Against the World (w/ Jennifer Burns)

An atheist, a radical for capitalism, a caricature of a greedy libertarian, a best-selling novelist, a difficult partner and passionate lover, and the self-proclaimed greatest philosopher since Aristotle: Ayn Rand was many things, and we talk about almost all of them in this epic episode. To do so, we called upon historian Jennifer Burns, whose intellectual biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right , is enormously helpful in trying to understand an idiosyncratic writer who, both then and now, fits ambiguously into the "fusionist" post-war conservative movement. Rand remains a controversial figure whose ideas permeate our culture and continue to inspire some of the most consequential (and least appealing) political figures in the United States. To understand Rand and her influence, we examine her family's experiences during and after the Russian Revolution, her journey to the U.S. and early success in Hollywood, the arduous path she trod to become a writer, Rand's involvement in anti-New Deal politics in the 1930s and 40s, her ideas, philosophy, and scandalous personal life, and much more.

Sources:

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)

— Atlas Shrugged (1957)

— We the Living (1936)

Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009)

— Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)

Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister Is Watching You," National Review, Dec 28, 1957

Murray Rothbard, "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult," (1972)

Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991)

Lisa Duggan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, (2019)

— "Ayn Rand and the Cruel Heart of Neoliberalism," Dissent, May 20, 2019.

Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, (2011)

Listen again:

"Milton Friedman and the Making of Our Times," Dec 3, 2023

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our premium episodes!

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January 6, Five Years Later (w/ Robert Draper)

For years now on Know Your Enemy, we've taken the January 6, 2021 insurrection as a glimpse of Trumpism unbound—not a few naive Q-anon types and tourists bumbling around, and not an excuse to be black...

12 Tammi 1h 37min

Great Books and the AI Apocalypse (w/ Matt Dinan) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.We were excited to record and share this conversation with Matt Dinan, a professor who teaches in a Great Books p...

2 Tammi 5min

UNLOCKED: Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner)

This episode originally aired November 17, 2025 on Patreon — we're unlocking it as a holiday treat. If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's proba...

22 Joulu 20251h 1min

What We Got Wrong (and Right) about the Right in 2025 [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to look back at another year of trying to understand the American ri...

15 Joulu 20256min

One Podcast After Another (w/ Jesse Brenneman)

Given the not-terribly-uplifting streak of episodes we've had lately, we thought it was time for a Know Your Enemy movie night, and were joined by the podcast's intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman, for...

8 Joulu 20251h 4min

On Friendship (w/ Andy Elrick)

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Should you try to improve your friends or leave them be? Do friendship and politics mix? Is friendship about virt...

1 Joulu 20251min

The Furious Minds of MAGA (w/ Laura Field)

Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, published earlier this month, is a book we simply had to discuss. Listeners to this podcast will recognize its cast of characters—cons...

24 Marras 20251h 9min

Trump's Big, Beautiful Ballroom (w/ Kate Wagner) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoi...

17 Marras 20254min