WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.120 Picture this, right? It's March 1982. We are 00:00:04.120 --> 00:00:06.780 in New York City and we're at a funeral. But 00:00:06.780 --> 00:00:09.480 it's not, you know, your standard somber affair. 00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:11.259 Right. No quiet hymns or anything like that. 00:00:11.419 --> 00:00:13.939 Exactly. No modest wreaths. Next to the casket 00:00:13.939 --> 00:00:16.879 towering over all the mourners is this massive 00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:19.719 six foot tall floral arrangement. And it's not 00:00:19.719 --> 00:00:22.460 a cross or, I don't know, a heart. It's shaped 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:25.660 entirely like a giant dollar sign. Yeah, which 00:00:25.660 --> 00:00:27.640 is just incredible. And the woman in that casket 00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:31.429 was Ayn Rand. Yeah. Honestly, that massive floral 00:00:31.429 --> 00:00:35.950 dollar sign, it just perfectly captures the uncompromising 00:00:35.950 --> 00:00:38.289 and highly controversial empire she left behind. 00:00:38.549 --> 00:00:41.340 It really does. So today we're doing a deep dive 00:00:41.340 --> 00:00:43.500 into the historical records to figure out how 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:46.640 a young Russian refugee fleeing the Bolsheviks 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:49.520 basically willed an entirely new moral universe 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:52.780 into existence. We're pulling from a really comprehensive 00:00:52.780 --> 00:00:55.200 Wikipedia article detailing her life, her works, 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:57.899 and her philosophy. And our mission today is 00:00:57.899 --> 00:01:00.579 to unpack how she birthed a philosophical empire 00:01:00.579 --> 00:01:02.840 that fundamentally reshaped American political 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:05.500 and economic thought. Which is a legacy that's 00:01:05.500 --> 00:01:07.840 still intensely, I mean furiously debated today. 00:01:07.939 --> 00:01:12.280 Oh, absolutely. And whether you are completely 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:14.799 new to her work, or you've spent hours arguing 00:01:14.799 --> 00:01:17.840 about her ideas over the dinner table, understanding 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:22.299 Rand is just crucial. Because her ideas really 00:01:22.299 --> 00:01:26.819 form the invisible architecture behind so much 00:01:26.819 --> 00:01:29.299 of modern business and politics. You might not 00:01:29.299 --> 00:01:31.640 even realize it, but you're navigating a world 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:34.280 that's profoundly shaped by the concepts she 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:36.980 championed. Yeah, it's everywhere. But to really 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:38.840 understand the philosophy, you have to look at 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:41.560 the intense childhood trauma that forged it. 00:01:42.099 --> 00:01:44.079 Exactly. Because she wasn't born Ayn Rand, you 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:47.299 know, the American icon. She was born Elisa Rosenbaum 00:01:47.299 --> 00:01:50.579 in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. Right. And 00:01:50.579 --> 00:01:52.980 she grew up in a relatively comfortable bourgeois 00:01:52.980 --> 00:01:55.459 Jewish family. Yeah, and that comfort, it just 00:01:55.459 --> 00:01:57.760 evaporated practically overnight. Just gone. 00:01:57.959 --> 00:01:59.620 Right. I mean, she was only 12 years old when 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:02.180 the October Revolution hit. Yeah. The Bolsheviks 00:02:02.180 --> 00:02:04.900 came to power under Lenin, and her family's life 00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:07.620 was violently upended. It's hard to even imagine. 00:02:07.959 --> 00:02:10.740 The state literally marched in and nationalized 00:02:10.740 --> 00:02:14.360 her father's pharmacy. Just think about the psychological 00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:16.099 shock of that for a 12 -year -old. Oh, yeah. 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.439 The sudden declaration that your family's property, 00:02:19.879 --> 00:02:22.520 your entire livelihood, it no longer belongs 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:24.699 to you. It belongs to the people. The concept 00:02:24.699 --> 00:02:28.120 of individual property just vanishes in an instant. 00:02:28.340 --> 00:02:31.930 Oof. Oof. Gone. And it plunged her family into 00:02:31.930 --> 00:02:34.810 desperate conditions. The sources show they fled 00:02:34.810 --> 00:02:37.430 to Crimea, but eventually they had to return 00:02:37.430 --> 00:02:39.610 to Petrograd, which is what St. Petersburg was 00:02:39.610 --> 00:02:41.689 called then, and they were pushed to the brink 00:02:41.689 --> 00:02:44.349 of actual starvation. It was brutal. And it didn't 00:02:44.349 --> 00:02:47.310 even stop there. When she eventually got to university, 00:02:47.449 --> 00:02:50.490 she was actually among the first women to enroll 00:02:50.490 --> 00:02:52.949 at Petrograd State University. Wow. But then 00:02:52.949 --> 00:02:55.669 she was purged, she was kicked out, not because 00:02:55.669 --> 00:02:57.789 of her grades or anything she actually did, but 00:02:57.789 --> 00:02:59.770 simply because of her bourgeois background. Yeah, 00:03:00.050 --> 00:03:02.169 pure collective guilt. Exactly. The individual 00:03:02.169 --> 00:03:04.669 just did not matter at all. Only the class category 00:03:04.669 --> 00:03:08.180 mattered. and the trauma of having her family's 00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:11.080 livelihood stolen in the name of the common good 00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:13.479 and being punished simply for the group she belonged 00:03:13.479 --> 00:03:16.939 to, it created this permanent visceral revulsion 00:03:16.939 --> 00:03:19.900 to anything resembling collectivism. Okay, let's 00:03:19.900 --> 00:03:22.300 unpack this for a second because it feels like, 00:03:22.319 --> 00:03:24.740 well, it feels like Newton's third law applied 00:03:24.740 --> 00:03:26.680 to ideology. Oh, that's a good way to put it. 00:03:26.860 --> 00:03:30.159 Right, like the extreme forced collectivism she 00:03:30.159 --> 00:03:32.479 suffered caused an equal and opposite reaction 00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:35.659 of absolute uncompromising individuals. Would 00:03:35.659 --> 00:03:39.020 you say her entire worldview was essentially 00:03:39.020 --> 00:03:42.319 just a massive trauma response? I mean, you can 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:44.139 certainly trace a direct line between the two. 00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:47.219 You see this literally dramatized in her 1938 00:03:47.219 --> 00:03:50.240 novella Anthem. Oh, right. She created this dystopian 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:53.560 future where totalitarian collectivism has triumphed 00:03:53.560 --> 00:03:57.120 so completely that the word I has actually been 00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:59.240 eradicated from the human vocabulary. Wait, like 00:03:59.240 --> 00:04:02.319 the word itself is gone. Gone. It's been replaced 00:04:02.319 --> 00:04:05.939 entirely with we. The protagonists in the story 00:04:05.939 --> 00:04:08.479 have to literally escape society and run into 00:04:08.479 --> 00:04:10.860 the wilderness just to rediscover the concept 00:04:10.860 --> 00:04:13.080 of the individual self. Which perfectly mirrors 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:16.319 her own escape. Exactly. Because in 1926, she 00:04:16.319 --> 00:04:19.220 manages to get a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, 00:04:19.519 --> 00:04:22.439 and she basically never looks back. No, she doesn't. 00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:25.540 She learns English, moves to Hollywood, and she 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:28.279 has this wild chance encounter with the legendary 00:04:28.279 --> 00:04:31.240 director Cecil B. DeMille. Yeah. Who gives her 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:34.480 work as an extra in his film The King. of Kings, 00:04:34.819 --> 00:04:37.660 and she completely reinvents herself. She adopts 00:04:37.660 --> 00:04:39.720 the name Anne Rand. Right. It's almost like she 00:04:39.720 --> 00:04:41.560 was the first character she ever wrote. Oh, wow. 00:04:41.660 --> 00:04:43.839 Yeah. She literally wrote the script for her 00:04:43.839 --> 00:04:46.139 own life. She did. Yeah. And because her worldview 00:04:46.139 --> 00:04:49.220 was so absolute, so fiercely individualistic, 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:51.540 she had to figure out a way to broadcast it to 00:04:51.540 --> 00:04:54.300 the world. And she didn't do it by writing dense, 00:04:54.620 --> 00:04:57.379 impenetrable academic papers that only a few 00:04:57.379 --> 00:04:59.860 professors would read. She used fiction. The 00:04:59.860 --> 00:05:03.980 ultimate Trojan horse. Exactly. She used blockbuster 00:05:03.980 --> 00:05:06.680 melodramatic fiction to get her ideas directly 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:09.959 into the minds of the masses. And the backstory 00:05:09.959 --> 00:05:12.480 of how she pulled that off is just incredible. 00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:14.920 Let's look at The Fountainhead, which came out 00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:19.579 in 1943. OK. It was not an easy sell. 12 different 00:05:19.579 --> 00:05:22.259 publishers rejected the manuscript. 12? Yeah. 00:05:22.699 --> 00:05:24.800 It only saw the light of day because an editor 00:05:24.800 --> 00:05:28.220 at Bob's Merrell named Archibald Ogden literally 00:05:28.220 --> 00:05:30.660 threatened to quit his job if his employer didn't 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:32.759 publish it. Talk about putting it all on the 00:05:32.759 --> 00:05:34.899 line. Right. He put his entire career on the 00:05:34.899 --> 00:05:37.920 line for this one book. And it introduces Howard 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:41.120 Roark, this heroic, uncompromising architect 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:44.360 who absolutely refuses to bend his vision to 00:05:44.360 --> 00:05:47.259 the masses. And Rourke is the ultimate Randian 00:05:47.259 --> 00:05:49.839 ideal. He is constantly battling what she calls 00:05:49.839 --> 00:05:51.779 second -handers. Second -handers, yeah. And a 00:05:51.779 --> 00:05:53.959 second -hander, in her view, isn't just someone 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:56.620 who copies work. It's someone who has no internal 00:05:56.620 --> 00:05:58.600 compass. They don't think for themselves. They 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:01.420 seek approval. They live through the expectations 00:06:01.420 --> 00:06:03.839 of others. Right. And they place the opinions 00:06:03.839 --> 00:06:06.660 of society above their own rational judgment. 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:09.240 And then she followed that up in 1957 with her 00:06:09.240 --> 00:06:11.899 massive magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, where she 00:06:11.899 --> 00:06:15.939 asks this terrifying question. What if the motor 00:06:15.939 --> 00:06:19.120 of the world, like the creators, the industrialists, 00:06:19.220 --> 00:06:21.939 the scientists, what if they just stopped? They 00:06:21.939 --> 00:06:24.420 go on strike. Yeah, they retreat to a hidden 00:06:24.420 --> 00:06:27.079 valley to protest a welfare state that leeches 00:06:27.079 --> 00:06:31.680 off their genius. And the hero, John Galt, literally 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:34.579 gives a multi -page monologue laying out her 00:06:34.579 --> 00:06:36.959 entire philosophy. It was such an unprecedented 00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:39.600 way to deliver a philosophical treatise. But, 00:06:39.620 --> 00:06:42.829 you know, to generate that kind of massive literary 00:06:42.829 --> 00:06:45.449 output, she pushed herself to extreme limits. 00:06:45.829 --> 00:06:47.689 Okay, right. And that brings up a specific detail 00:06:47.689 --> 00:06:49.750 from the sources that really caught my eye. What's 00:06:49.750 --> 00:06:51.709 that? While she was rushing to meet her deadlines 00:06:51.709 --> 00:06:54.029 for the Fountainhead, she was actually prescribed 00:06:54.029 --> 00:06:56.730 benzadrine. Right, and amphetamine. Yeah, to 00:06:56.730 --> 00:06:58.889 fight fatigue. And she ended up using it for 00:06:58.889 --> 00:07:01.610 roughly three decades. The records suggest this 00:07:01.610 --> 00:07:03.990 habit heavily contributed to severe mood swings 00:07:03.990 --> 00:07:06.209 and outbursts later in life. Yeah, it took a 00:07:06.209 --> 00:07:08.769 toll. So I have to ask, how does a philosophy 00:07:08.769 --> 00:07:12.540 that champions pure unadulterated square with 00:07:12.540 --> 00:07:15.420 a writing process fueled for decades by mind 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:17.980 -altering chemicals. It's a striking juxtaposition, 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.319 isn't it? Yeah, totally. On one hand, you have 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:23.120 a philosophy demanding absolute cognitive clarity. 00:07:23.279 --> 00:07:25.819 Right. And on the other, this physical reliance 00:07:25.819 --> 00:07:28.600 on amphetamines, just to push the human body 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:31.579 past its natural limits. Right. But in a strange 00:07:31.579 --> 00:07:34.420 way, it kind of ties into her specific literary 00:07:34.420 --> 00:07:37.160 approach, which she called romantic realism. 00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:39.699 Meaning what, exactly? Meaning she wasn't trying 00:07:39.699 --> 00:07:42.759 to depict the gritty, flawed, exhausting reality 00:07:42.759 --> 00:07:45.879 of human limitation. She explicitly stated she 00:07:45.879 --> 00:07:48.699 wanted to show the world not as it is, but as 00:07:48.699 --> 00:07:51.360 it could and should be. Oh, okay. So her heroes 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:53.879 were hyper -competent, flawless, attractive, 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:56.899 unyielding, and practically immune to fatigue. 00:07:57.100 --> 00:07:59.439 Almost ascetic in their discipline. Precisely. 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:02.560 And the irony here is incredibly rich. How so? 00:08:02.819 --> 00:08:05.319 Well, she vehemently disliked most Russian literature, 00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:08.410 viewing it as deeply pessimistic. Yet scholars 00:08:08.410 --> 00:08:11.110 note that her uncompromising, heroic individualists 00:08:11.110 --> 00:08:13.850 were heavily influenced by 19th century Russian 00:08:13.850 --> 00:08:16.850 writers. Wait, really? Yeah. Specifically, Nikolai 00:08:16.850 --> 00:08:19.850 Khrunichevsky and his 1863 novel, What Is To 00:08:19.850 --> 00:08:22.930 Be Done? His main character was this ascetic, 00:08:23.290 --> 00:08:25.670 disciplined revolutionary, and that character 00:08:25.670 --> 00:08:28.410 served as a literal template for Rand's capitalist 00:08:28.410 --> 00:08:31.009 heroes. That is wild. She took the psychological 00:08:31.009 --> 00:08:32.990 mold of the Russian revolutionary and just filled 00:08:32.990 --> 00:08:36.240 it with Liz's warfare capitalism. Wow. And because 00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:38.740 her novels depicted these incredibly competent 00:08:38.740 --> 00:08:41.600 heroes, her readers didn't just want sequels, 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:44.360 they wanted a user manual. They wanted to know 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:47.259 how to actually live like Howard Roark. And that 00:08:47.259 --> 00:08:49.720 public demand forced her to pivot from being 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:52.659 just a novelist to becoming a formal philosopher, 00:08:52.700 --> 00:08:55.679 which leads to the birth of objectivism. Right. 00:08:55.799 --> 00:08:58.360 She transitioned into a popular philosopher with 00:08:58.360 --> 00:09:02.200 very clear, rigid core tenets. Objectivism champions 00:09:02.200 --> 00:09:04.700 rational egoism, it declared. as laissez -faire 00:09:04.700 --> 00:09:08.059 capitalism as the only moral social system, because 00:09:08.059 --> 00:09:10.019 it's the only system that protects individual 00:09:10.019 --> 00:09:13.620 rights. And crucially, it actively and aggressively 00:09:13.620 --> 00:09:16.500 rejects altruism. She didn't just disagree with 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:19.159 altruism, she condemned it as an evil. She certainly 00:09:19.159 --> 00:09:20.799 was not shy about where she ranked herself in 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:22.879 the pantheon of thinkers either. Not at all. 00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:25.559 The sources mention she famously claimed she 00:09:25.559 --> 00:09:27.820 only owed a philosophical debt to Aristotle. 00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:31.470 She called it the three A's. Aristotle Aquinas 00:09:31.470 --> 00:09:35.049 and Anne Rand. Talk about confidence. Meanwhile, 00:09:35.350 --> 00:09:38.049 she named Immanuel Kant the most evil man in 00:09:38.049 --> 00:09:40.210 history. Yeah, she didn't hold back. But here's 00:09:40.210 --> 00:09:42.049 where it gets really interesting. I want to push 00:09:42.049 --> 00:09:45.889 back on this core concept of egoism because she 00:09:45.889 --> 00:09:49.269 wrote a book literally titled The Virtue of Selfishness. 00:09:49.409 --> 00:09:51.659 Right. But in everyday life, for you and me, 00:09:52.059 --> 00:09:54.299 selfish means like cutting in line or eating 00:09:54.299 --> 00:09:57.299 the last slice of pizza without asking. How on 00:09:57.299 --> 00:10:00.240 earth did she justify selfishness as a virtue? 00:10:00.580 --> 00:10:02.399 Well, to understand Ran, you have to realize 00:10:02.399 --> 00:10:05.399 she completely redefined the word. OK. To her, 00:10:05.679 --> 00:10:08.000 selfishness did not mean petty, malicious behavior. 00:10:08.500 --> 00:10:11.080 It meant rational self -interest. It meant doing 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:14.379 what is required for man's survival qua man. 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:16.980 Wait, qua -man. For those of us who aren't reading 00:10:16.980 --> 00:10:19.259 Latin on the woodpans, what does qua actually 00:10:19.259 --> 00:10:21.799 mean in this context? Yeah, fair question. It 00:10:21.799 --> 00:10:24.639 basically just means in the capacity of or as. 00:10:24.899 --> 00:10:28.000 So man's survival as man. She meant that you 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.460 shouldn't just survive like an animal. You must 00:10:30.460 --> 00:10:32.720 survive in a way that aligns with your nature 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:36.019 as a rational human being. Using your mind. Exactly. 00:10:36.259 --> 00:10:39.500 Using your rational mind to produce and create 00:10:39.500 --> 00:10:42.159 while never initiating force against others. 00:10:42.409 --> 00:10:44.149 And just to pause here for a second, we have 00:10:44.149 --> 00:10:46.850 an impartiality rule check. Yes, very important. 00:10:46.950 --> 00:10:49.889 We need to explicitly remind you, the listener, 00:10:49.990 --> 00:10:52.269 that we are not taking sides here. Right, we're 00:10:52.269 --> 00:10:54.480 just looking at the text. Exactly. The source 00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:56.700 material features heavy criticism from the political 00:10:56.700 --> 00:10:59.980 left who blame her ideas for extreme neoliberal 00:10:59.980 --> 00:11:03.539 greed and from the religious right who vehemently 00:11:03.539 --> 00:11:06.240 oppose her atheism and her rejection of altruism. 00:11:06.440 --> 00:11:08.779 We are simply conveying her ideas as written 00:11:08.779 --> 00:11:11.139 not endorsing them. Absolutely. We're looking 00:11:11.139 --> 00:11:13.500 at the mechanics of the philosophy because the 00:11:13.500 --> 00:11:15.980 reality is the turbulence wasn't just in the 00:11:15.980 --> 00:11:18.720 broader culture. It was intensely present in 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:21.539 her own inner circle. If you take these pristine 00:11:21.539 --> 00:11:23.820 logical rules off the page and try to apply them 00:11:23.820 --> 00:11:27.100 to actual human beings, it gets remarkably messy. 00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:29.980 Messy is an understatement. Let's talk about 00:11:29.980 --> 00:11:32.279 the Nathaniel Brandon Institute, or the NBI. 00:11:33.059 --> 00:11:35.480 This was established by fans to study her work. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:38.700 And then there's this historical anecdote that 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:42.090 just... blows my mind. The affair. Yes. Rand, 00:11:42.269 --> 00:11:44.009 who is married, and Nathaniel Brandon, who is 00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:45.990 also married, decide they're going to initiate 00:11:45.990 --> 00:11:49.470 a romantic affair. And how do they handle it? 00:11:49.649 --> 00:11:52.389 They literally sit their spouses down and spin 00:11:52.389 --> 00:11:55.769 out a deductive chain of logic, explaining why 00:11:55.769 --> 00:11:58.889 this affair is the only rational outcome of their 00:11:58.889 --> 00:12:01.129 shared philosophical values. It is stunning. 00:12:01.409 --> 00:12:03.490 They presented a syllogism. They basically argued, 00:12:03.870 --> 00:12:06.090 we are the two highest embodiments of objectivist 00:12:06.090 --> 00:12:08.970 virtues. Therefore, it is only logical that we 00:12:08.970 --> 00:12:11.309 must be romantically involved. They tried to 00:12:11.309 --> 00:12:14.070 math equation human desire. It really did. And 00:12:14.070 --> 00:12:16.350 while the spouses reportedly gave verbal assent, 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:18.710 historians note that Rand's husband, Frank O 00:12:18.710 --> 00:12:21.070 'Connor, was likely deeply hurt by this. It's 00:12:21.070 --> 00:12:23.490 a recurring theme. Trying to force the messy 00:12:23.490 --> 00:12:26.269 reality of human emotion into the unyielding 00:12:26.269 --> 00:12:28.730 framework of pure reason. So what does this all 00:12:28.730 --> 00:12:30.950 mean? We have a philosophy entirely based on 00:12:30.950 --> 00:12:32.889 independent thought and rejecting authority. 00:12:33.230 --> 00:12:35.809 Yet critics described her movement as a cult. 00:12:36.389 --> 00:12:38.450 Followers mimicked her clothing, her furniture, 00:12:38.610 --> 00:12:40.809 even her cigarette smoking. It's the ultimate 00:12:40.809 --> 00:12:44.090 paradox. a collective forming around the ultimate 00:12:44.090 --> 00:12:47.450 anti -collectivist. And it leads directly into 00:12:47.450 --> 00:12:49.649 the tragedy of her later years. Because it all 00:12:49.649 --> 00:12:52.769 fell apart. It did. She famously broke with Brandon 00:12:52.769 --> 00:12:54.870 over his affair with another woman, one he hid 00:12:54.870 --> 00:12:57.549 from her. The logic didn't quite hold up that 00:12:57.549 --> 00:13:01.149 time. No, it didn't. She shut down the FBI. And 00:13:01.149 --> 00:13:04.490 despite her massive success, she was deeply depressed 00:13:04.490 --> 00:13:06.809 by the intellectual rejection of her work. Oh, 00:13:06.809 --> 00:13:09.379 right. The Whittaker Chambers Review. Yes. He 00:13:09.379 --> 00:13:11.799 wrote a savage review of Atlas Shrugged, claiming 00:13:11.799 --> 00:13:13.639 a voice could be heard of the book commanding 00:13:13.639 --> 00:13:16.919 to a gas chamber go. Just brutal. It devastated 00:13:16.919 --> 00:13:20.059 her. And then there's the final contradiction. 00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:23.240 The ultimate anti -statist eventually enrolled 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:25.440 in Medicare and Social Security under her married 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:28.519 name. It's so human. But looking at her unlikely 00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:31.440 legacy, while academic philosophers mostly dismissed 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:33.879 her and her movement splintered, her ideas somehow 00:13:33.879 --> 00:13:36.840 conquered massive swaths of the real world. Over 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:40.200 37 million books sold. She became the novelist 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:42.879 laureate of the Reagan administration. And a 00:13:42.879 --> 00:13:45.500 massive influence on the Libertarian Party, which 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:47.639 is ironic because she hated Libertarians. She 00:13:47.639 --> 00:13:49.480 considered them anarchists. Right. But look at 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:52.019 the 2008 financial crisis. You had Tea Party 00:13:52.019 --> 00:13:54.799 protesters carrying signs asking, who is John 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:57.419 Gall? You had major figures like Alan Greenspan, 00:13:57.559 --> 00:13:59.860 the former Fed chair, heavily influenced by her. 00:14:00.220 --> 00:14:03.919 She is really the ultimate gateway drug to right 00:14:03.919 --> 00:14:06.850 wing politics. And you, the listener, just look 00:14:06.850 --> 00:14:08.929 around today. Whether you're walking through 00:14:08.929 --> 00:14:11.330 Silicon Valley or listening to a political debate, 00:14:12.049 --> 00:14:16.570 the DNA of Rand's heroic creator is everywhere. 00:14:17.110 --> 00:14:19.629 Academics might ignore her, but you can't ignore 00:14:19.629 --> 00:14:21.830 a writer whose book was voted the second most 00:14:21.830 --> 00:14:24.269 influential book in readers' lives, right after 00:14:24.269 --> 00:14:26.970 the Bible. in a Library of Congress survey. It's 00:14:26.970 --> 00:14:29.409 an incredible journey from a starving girl in 00:14:29.409 --> 00:14:32.350 Soviet Russia to an American icon who tried to 00:14:32.350 --> 00:14:35.309 build an entire moral universe out of pure logic 00:14:35.309 --> 00:14:37.549 and self -interest. It really is. And I want 00:14:37.549 --> 00:14:39.549 to leave you with a final thought to ponder. 00:14:40.230 --> 00:14:43.269 Rand believed that art was a selective recreation 00:14:43.269 --> 00:14:46.250 of reality. So looking at the intense political 00:14:46.250 --> 00:14:48.830 and economic divides of our modern world today. 00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:52.740 Are we living in the reality that Ayn Rand selectively 00:14:52.740 --> 00:14:55.419 created through her fiction? Or were her novels 00:14:55.419 --> 00:14:58.039 just a perfectly angled mirror reflecting the 00:14:58.039 --> 00:15:00.740 inevitable uncompromising extremes of human nature? 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.940 That is a fascinating thought to Tuan. Keep questioning 00:15:03.940 --> 00:15:06.000 the architecture around you and we'll catch you 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:07.000 on the next Deep Dive.