Episodes

https://youtu.be/9PCQRzAMohQ Podcast audio: As the Ayn Rand Institute marks its 40th anniversary, its mission to spread Objectivism through education has never been more urgent. In his 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference presentation, "Spreading Objectivism: A Vision for ARI's Future," President and CEO Tal Tsfany laid out a bold vision of the “big swings” ARI is taking to bring Objectivism into the cultural mainstream. At the heart of this expansion are major advances in ARI’s educational offeri...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e-3oeMO-0w&t=4s Podcast audio: Ayn Rand viewed the American founding’s enshrinement of individuals rights as the greatest political achievement in human history. Yet the rising statism of the twentieth century dramatically undermined those ideals. In Rand’s view, America needed a moral revolution: one that renounced the ethics of altruism and embraced the morality of self-interest. What would it take to achieve such a transformation? On Independence Day at the 20...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtW5q-7XaTw Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Ben Bayer and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss how arbitrary immigration laws strangle American business. Among the topics covered: How immigration restrictions impose a form of economic central planning; The role of the mixed economy in fueling the interest-group battle for legal carve-outs; How ICE raids are used to terrorize businesses and hard-working immigrants; How the Trump administra...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5csuEpTn69o Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Samantha Watkins interviews Dr. Matt Bateman, philosopher at GT School, co-founder of Higher Ground Education, and ARU instructor, about the school choice movement and the philosophical case for education freedom. Among the topics covered: What the expanding reach of school choice programs means for parental freedom; Why parents, not the government, should invest in education; Why the sc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDj_LhwM0Vw Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss two major recent events: Israel’s war against Iran and the political assassinations in Minnesota. Among the topics covered: The Israel-Iran War Why Israel's war against Iran is a positive development; Why a self-interested American foreign policy must break from the legacy of 9/11; The Minnesota assassinations How political violence is becoming a broad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMepGP0ehPo Podcast Audio In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Elan Journo interviews ARI intellectuals about their upcoming talks at the Objectivist Summer Conference, taking place July 1-5 in Boston, Massachusetts. Among the topics covered: Audra Hilse’s talk, “Revised Blueprints: Early Versions of Part II of The Fountainhead,” which will draw on archival material to offer insights into Rand’s creative process; David Bakker’s talk, “Newton Versus D...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YchKm3DnUFo Podcast Audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss the ongoing mass protests in Los Angeles and how the Trump administration’s response also shows a disregard for the rule of law. Among the topics covered: The scale of the violence; Evidence that the rioters do not care about immigrants’ individual rights; Why the right to peaceably assemble does not imply a right to mass protest; The bad jurisprudence t...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A28R9JnfNro Podcast audio: In this episode of The ARI Bookshelf, Elan Journo, Mike Mazza, Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Robertas Bakula discuss The Technological Republic, the recent New York Times bestseller by Alexander C. Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, and Nicholas W. Zamiska, the company’s head of corporate affairs and legal counsel. Karp and Zamiska argue that America’s future greatness hinges on a renewed commitment to national industrial policy. They claim ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY3NY7gFYtw Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Ben Bayer and Tristan de Liège examine Douglas Murray’s recent critique of Joe Rogan and other influencers who share their platforms with unreliable pseudo-experts. They explain why Murray fails to clarify the standards for distinguishing expert from non-expert testimony. Among the topics covered: Why Douglas Murray’s challenge to Joe Rogan’s platforming of non-experts is only partly rig...

https://youtu.be/iVJOTxv-tWk Podcast audio: American schools have long performed dismally at providing the education children need to read well. A movement in favor of systematic phonics instruction offers hope for improvement, but while phonics is essential to teaching children to read, they need further education to become highly capable readers. This talk by Sam Weaver defines a properly aspirational goal for reading education, explores the types of knowledge and skills that go into reading, ...

https://youtu.be/o615h8druDE Podcast audio: The creation of the atom bomb during WWII was an extraordinary achievement, dramatized in part in the movie Oppenheimer. What were the three greatest challenges in making the bomb and how does the success in overcoming those very difficult obstacles illustrate the application of objectivity? Which great scientists’ work were most essential to the success of the project? As Ayn Rand said of Apollo 11, the Manhattan Project was “an achievement of reason,...

https://youtu.be/VUYooprteeU Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Onkar Ghate and Agustina Vergara Cid analyze how the Trump administration’s immigration policy has escalated attacks on due process, legal immigration, and the broader American system of government. (Since the recording of this podcast, Rümeysa Öztürk has been granted bail by a federal judge and released after more than six weeks in detention.) Among the topics covered: How the Trump administration has...

https://youtu.be/RclwB5luKek Podcast audio: Ayn Rand denounced racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” She also rejected as collectivist many of the measures being advocated to combat this evil, including what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On the sixtieth anniversary of that law, Dr. Greg Salmieri revisited the themes of Rand’s classic article “Racism,” relating them to present-day America. Topics include the definitions of “race” and “racism,” how the rejecti...

https://youtu.be/2yQWRvrbVUI Podcast audio: Foreign policy is both a political activity and a field of applied ethics. However, the metaphysical and epistemological premises held by theorists and practitioners shape their view of ethics. The lack of an objective view of the world has led to theories and policies that do not support, and are often harmful to, the role of a proper government. However, as Scott McDonald explains, an objective understanding of the global system can lead to a first-h...

https://youtu.be/LVNSnbdEo0o Podcast audio: In this episode of The ARI Bookshelf, Onkar Ghate, Tristan de Liège, and Robertas Bakula discuss Abundance, the recent best-selling book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has gained traction in liberal circles. Klein and Thompson acknowledge the failings of past liberal policies and present what they call the “abundance agenda” as an alternative. The agenda emphasizes streamlined regulations alongside robust government involvement in production — a...

https://youtu.be/0R_RjyOJeI4 Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Ben Bayer, Robertas Bakula, and Tristan de Liège explore how the mixed economy enables the unjust exploitation of society’s most productive individuals. Among the topics covered: Why, contrary to Marxist claims, businesspeople are the most exploited group in a mixed economy; How antitrust laws enable the government and less successful companies to exploit successful companies; How tariffs drive the mat...

https://youtu.be/7Wjrmh8CjAk Podcast audio: As a historian and philosopher of biology, much of Dr. James Lennox’s research has focused on the philosophical foundations of history’s two greatest biologists: Aristotle and Charles Darwin. Historians and philosophers often portray these two giants as diametrically opposed in their approach to the study of life. But were they? In this talk, he provides a novel answer to that question — and guidance on how to engage with such questions objectively. Re...

https://youtu.be/sNtIs4UmXns Podcast audio: The most pernicious ideas are often injected into the culture by the method of “package-dealing” — the attempt to integrate the unintegratable. Expanding on previous material he has presented on this subject, Mr. Peter Schwartz offers a more advanced analysis of the mechanics of the package-deal. He addresses such questions as: Can the same word stand for both a valid concept and a package-deal? What is the role of a definition in the formation of pack...

https://youtu.be/S53avG169mw Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Elan Journo and Ben Bayer discuss the Trump administration’s move to restart nuclear talks with Iran by rehashing Obama’s failed deal. Among the topics covered: How the Trump administration’s new Iran deal essentially recycles Obama’s failed policy; Why hopes for diplomacy with Iran evade the regime’s totalitarian nature; Why treating a death-worshipping regime as legitimate empowers its cause; The rol...

https://youtu.be/Ff78OyGNA40 Podcast audio: This sample class by Gena Gorlin is based on the full-length ARU course of the same name. The full course explores the major schools of thought, methods of inquiry, and empirical findings taught in a typical introduction to psychology course. But it explores how to understand and evaluate these theories, methods, and findings from an Objectivist perspective. Students learn how Objectivism can help us consume and get personal value from existing work in...

https://youtu.be/oMFbMFvDJ50 Podcast audio: In this talk, Dr. Amesh Adalja details innovative new developments in science that will enhance the lives of individuals. Topics include transplantation of pig hearts and kidneys into humans, cell-based therapies for cancer, genetically modified mosquitoes, new vaccines and vaccine technologies, AI-discovered antibiotics, CRISPR therapeutics, and more. Recorded live on June 15 in Anaheim, CA as part of OCON 2024.

https://youtu.be/pWpAiAioZTE Podcast audio: In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Robertas Bakula and Mike Mazza explore the themes from Mazza’s upcoming essay, which argues that freedom, not government control, is the true engine of progress in the space industry. Among the topics covered: How NASA’s monopoly led to decades of stagnation in space innovation; How economic freedom has fueled the recent progress in the space industry; Why NASA’s role as a scientific research agency li...

https://youtu.be/79fT9VIDkVs Podcast audio: As Ayn Rand wrote, “The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it.” We can see this failure of understanding in the view, advanced by many conservatives and libertarians today, that the concept of individual rights ultimately derives from or is at least consistent with the Judeo-Christian morality. In this talk, B...

https://youtu.be/UaRhK2N8m6Y Podcast audio: A continuation of Dr. Harry Binswanger’s Saving Math from Plato (OCON 2023): how the Aristotelian, perception-based approach to mathematics refutes or re-interprets wrong ideas advanced by figures such as Russell and Cantor. Topics include number, infinity, limits, and the axiomatic concepts of mathematics. (The lecture assumes no knowledge of mathematics beyond beginning algebra.) Recorded live on June 16 in Anaheim, CA as part of OCON 2024.