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!

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(266)

An Officer and a Spy (w/ John Ganz) [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Roman Polanski's 2019 film about the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and a Spy, only recently made it's U.S. "premier,...

5 Syys 20253min

Frank Meyer, Inventor of Conservatism (w/ Daniel J. Flynn)

Devoted Know Your Enemy listeners will recall that, in November 2021, we released a fairly dense, theory-driven episode on Frank Meyer, the Communist from New Jersey whose exploits on behalf of the Pa...

28 Elo 20251h 45min

The Christian Right's "Wild Faith" (w/ Talia Lavin) [Unlocked]

This episode was first published in October 2024, and has been un-paywalled following the death this week, on August 21, of Focus on the Family founder and influential figure on the religious right, J...

23 Elo 20251h

The Minority Voters Moving Right (w/ Daniel Martinez HoSang)

A major topic following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election has been his gains with racial and ethnic minorities, a trend that's scrambled many people's assumptions about American...

18 Elo 20251h 27min

From Armageddon to Zionism — More Listener Questions [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Our mailbag runneth over! Unsurprisingly, we received so many excellent questions from subscribers for our most r...

11 Elo 20254min

Has Trump 2.0 Been a Success So Far? — And Other Questions

It's been nearly a year since we asked our subscribers to send us questions for a mailbag episode—which they did, with remarkable thoughtfulness and intelligence, for our 100th episode back in Septemb...

4 Elo 20251h 10min

Trump's Epstein Problem [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Over July 4th weekend, the Department of Justice and FBI put out a memo essentially declaring "case closed" on th...

28 Heinä 20254min

How Republics End (w/ Mike Duncan) [Unlocked]

This episode from January 2025 has been un-paywalled for your summer enjoyment...A stock rhetorical trope on the right is to invoke ancient Rome when talking about American decline—often making direct...

18 Heinä 20251h 15min