https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4zPY_XnfS8




Podcast audio:







The Enlightenment’s commitment to reason, individualism, and the power of knowledge sparked unprecedented progress in human life. Yet, despite this achievement, contemporary Western societies face deepening crises — mounting political violence, the collapse of alliances of free nations, and a growing support for authoritarian movements. What accounts for this reversal?



In his talk, “Saving the Enlightenment,” delivered at ARI’s 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, Onkar Ghate diagnoses the problem at its root: our cultural crises are the aftermath of a crucial philosophical gap left by the Enlightenment.



Ghate argues that a key feature of our cultural landscape is “a blind rebellion against an orgy of self-sacrifice.” Crises like 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread embrace of DEI initiatives marked the unfolding of self-sacrificial policies that cost American lives. Many who now condemn their leaders do not realize how those policies reflect the same moral code they still accept. They embrace alternative ideologies (like nationalism) that channel the same code. So they don’t know their real target: their rebellion against “elite” demands for self-sacrifice is “blind.”



This blindness, Ghate contends, stems from the Enlightenment’s failure to articulate a morality of self-interest. While its philosophers championed reason in science and politics, they never provided an alternative to the ethical frameworks that demanded individuals subordinate their welfare to collective duty. Consequently, modern culture lacks a coherent philosophy that sanctions the individual’s right to pursue happiness.



To secure the Enlightenment’s legacy, Ghate urges, requires adopting an ethical system that validates rational self-interest and personal happiness as moral goods — principles that only Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism fully articulates. Objectivism, in his view, provides “the new morality that's necessary to cement the achievements of the Enlightenment.”



Among the topics covered:




The Enlightenment and its failure



The grip of self-sacrifice



Self-sacrifice in the 21st century



Today’s pseudo-selfishness



Objectivism completes the Enlightenment




This talk was recorded live on July 2nd in Boston, MA, as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, and is available on The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1sggf9exTQ




Podcast audio:







In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Ben Bayer and Samantha Watkins challenge Zohran Mamdani’s plan to phase out NYC’s Gifted & Talented program — a move that would hold back advanced students from the education they need to thrive — and replace it with universal free childcare.



Topics include:




NYC’s Gifted & Talented Program



Mamdani’s Reasons to End G&T 



Mamdani’s Universal Childcare Proposal



The Goal is Punishing Gifted Kids



The Reaction to Mamdani’s Proposals



Education is Not Zero-Sum




Resources: 




Ayn Rand, “The Age of Envy”, Return of the Primitive



Ayn Rand, “The Comprachicos”, Return of the Primitive




This episode was recorded on November 5, 2025, and posted on November 13, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.





Image Credits: [Child]: Catherine Delahaye /DigitalVision / via Getty Images[Mamdani]: Stephanie Keith / Stringer / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnyS0vpTh_k




Podcast audio:







In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute podcast, Ben Bayer, Tristan de Liege, and Mike Mazza discuss Jeremy Sherman’s book, Neither Ghost Nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves.



Topics include:




Science and Philosophy;





Deacon’s Autogen Theory;





Other Theories of the Origin and Nature of Life;





Implications for Understanding Free Will;





Implications for Moral Philosophy.




Resources: 




Harry Binswanger, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts




This episode was recorded on October 10, 2025, and posted on November 11, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

Podcast audio:







This talk by Robertas Bakula was recorded live on July 2nd in Boston, MA as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference and is available on the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream.



Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMJR3ja3s5s




Podcast audio:







In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Tristan de Liège and Gregory Salmieri discuss friendship as a moral and philosophical value and explore the relationship between friendship, egoism, and altruism.



Topics include:




Friendship in Rand’s fiction;



Visibility in friendship;



Egoism and Friendship;   



Valuing Friendship;



Altruism and sacrifice;



Unconditional love;



Compromise and reciprocity.




Resources:




Tristan de Liège’s lecture “How to Value Friendship”



 A Companion to Ayn Rand, edited by Gregory Salmieri and Allan Gotthelf.




This episode was recorded on October 6, 2025, and posted October 30, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.







Image Credit: Compassionate Eye Foundation/Steven Errico/DigitalVision via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyhO8xssYY




Podcast audio:







In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Tristan de Liège, Mike Mazza, Gregory Salmieri and Ben Bayer discuss Kevin Mitchell’s book, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.



Topics include:




The locus of free will;



Moral responsibility;



The relevance of quantum mechanics;



Determinism;



Aristotle;



Randomness and indeterminacy;



“Agent causation” vs entity causation;



Blank slate.




Resources:




Harry Binswanger’s essay “Volition as Cognitive Self-Regulation.”




This episode was recorded on October 9, 2025, and posted on October 24, 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-L271Y9HPA




Podcast audio:







In this Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode, Mike Mazza and Samantha Watkins analyze objections to new embryo screening technology.




Orchid’s new technology



Moral status of embryos



Genetic tradeoffs



The “Eugenics” smear



Views toward the disabled



Losing our humanity




Resources:




Ayn Rand’s essay, “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” in The Return of the Primitive;  



Ayn Rand’s essay, “Of Living Death” in The Voice of Reason;



Ben Bayer’s essay, “The Absurdity at the Heart of the Alabama IVF Controversy”;  



Ben Bayer’s book, “Why the Right to Abortion is Sacrosanct”.




This podcast was recorded on September 17, 2025, and posted on October 23, 2025.









Image Credit: mihailomilovanovic / E+ / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zg_ANzngT0




Podcast audio:







The American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was met with intense public debate about the proper course of U.S. foreign policy. The Objectivist philosophy offers a distinctive framework for thinking about such issues.



In his 2025 OCON talk, “Principles of a Proper Foreign Policy,” Peter Schwartz, an Objectivist intellectual and former chairman of ARI’s board, argues that a nation’s foreign policy should be guided by the principle of individual rights and aimed at protecting the nation’s freedom.



Schwartz explains why this approach requires the consistent application of moral judgment. He criticizes the dominant diplomatic approach, which forbids pronouncing moral judgment and has led to decades of disastrous consequences as a result.



Among the topics covered:




Individual rights as the guiding principle of a nation’s foreign policy;



Why justice and moral judgment are crucial for a proper foreign policy;



Why Trump’s foreign policy is against America’s interests;



How to address threats from Iran and elsewhere;



Why diplomacy has failed, and why a principled policy of self-interest is urgently needed;



Miscellaneous questions about foreign policy:How close we are to World War 3;Whether appeasement works sometimes;How people can sympathize with Hamas and Iran;

Whether individuals should be allowed to trade with hostile countries.






This talk was recorded live on July 2nd in Boston, MA, as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, and is available on The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.









Image Credit: Vadim_Nefedov / via Getty Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi8sRxe21qo




Podcast audio:







In this Ayn Rand Institute Podcast episode, Elan Journo and Onkar Ghate discuss the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.




Overall evaluation of the deal;



Evading Hamas’s evil goals;



The injustice of the deal;



Altruism enables the injustice;



Enemies of freedom must be defeated.




This podcast was recorded on October 15, 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZCJXTdch2E




Podcast audio:







In this episode of ARI Bookshelf, Sam Weaver, Ben Bayer, Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Ibis Slade critically examine America’s Cultural Revolution by Christopher Rufo and The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk.



Among the topics covered:




Nature of “woke” ideology;



“Domino” view of ideological influence;



Influence of right-wing ideas;



Rufo’s authoritarianism;



Mounk’s egalitarianism and collectivism;



Books’ perspectives on real injustices;



Merits of Mounk’s book;



Weakness of Rufo’s critiques;



Rufo’s un-American tribalism;



Influence of postmodern epistemology;



Why “woke” ideology isn’t Marxism




Recommended in this podcast are Ayn Rand's essay “The Left: Old and New”, Rand’s book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and Leonard Peikoff’s book The DIM Hypothesis.



This episode was recorded on October 3, 2025, and posted on October 10, 2025.

This talk by Steven Warden was recorded live on July 3rd in Boston, MA as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference and is available on the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream.



Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V6c-9O3UHk




Podcast audio:







In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Tristan de Liège and Ben Bayer discuss the widespread claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.



Among the topics covered:




Decoupling from the confusion of “international law”



Validating the concept of “genocide”;



The invalid collectivist elements of the concept;



The absurd UN definition of “genocide”;



Why the valid concept does not apply to Israel;



Sidebar on the issue of just and unjust war;



The genocidal intent of Hamas




Recommended in this podcast is Elan Journo’s book What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Ben Bayer's essay "We Ignore the Unconditional Right to Self-Defense at Our Peril", and the podcast with Elan Journo and Nikos Sotirakopolous, "Did Israel Steal Palestinian Land?"



The podcast was recorded on October 3, 2025, and posted on October 7, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

The Post-Liberal Right threatens to roll back American liberty.

The Enlightenment, not Christianity, is the key to the West.

The recognition of a Palestinian state betrays good and rewards evil.

Intimidating broadcasters with the “public interest” standard is a worse abridgement of free speech than censorship.

Business leaders need to stand up for themselves before it's too late.

Podcast audio:







In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Onkar Ghate and Nikos Sotirakopoulos discuss the causes of America’s growing wave of political violence, which recently claimed Charlie Kirk as its latest victim.



Among the topics covered:




* The current state of political violence in America;



* How 9/11 and the BLM protests accelerated political violence;



* How Western intellectuals pushed the speech-as-violence equation into the mainstream;



* How tribal fear-mongering fuels political violence;



* Whether unqualified “civility” is the right standard for engaging someone rationally;



* Why we must have zero tolerance for any recourse to force.




The podcast was recorded and posted on September 12, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.

https://youtu.be/f84rPnU3xE4




Podcast audio:







With Donald Trump back in the White House, many warn that fascism is gaining ground in America. But beyond the partisan outcry, what is fascism, and can it really happen here?



In his 2025 OCON talk, “The Road to Fascism (and Are We on It?),” Nikos Sotirakopoulos explains that fascism is best understood as a distinctive worldview: a collectivist outlook that elevates the state (or nation, or race) to a myth demanding the individual’s submission. To address the question of whether history is repeating itself, he explains the fascist playbook: fascism thrives on crisis and casts a messianic leader as the great savior who will restore the glory days.



Sotirakopoulos notes troubling parallels to the MAGA movement, such as its cult of personality, fear-mongering, and contempt for the rule of law. Yet he argues it is not quite fascism, which demands a depth of ideological commitment that MAGA lacks. Still, the authoritarian impulse is real, and resisting it requires upholding truth and reason: “the disinfectants of fascism” and the guardians of American freedom.



Among the topics covered:




* What fascism is;



* The tools fascists use to take power;



* How Trump and his movement share major traits with fascists;



* Why, despite the parallels, Trump falls short of fascism;



* Miscellaneous questions on fascism:

* Whether there is hope in the Republican Party;



* The connection between the "manosphere" and fascism;



* Whether Trump's opponents can prevent fascism's rise.






This talk was recorded live on July 2nd in Boston, MA, as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, and is available on The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.







© Andreas Wolochow via Shutterstock.

https://youtu.be/oV2YJf-J8Pg




Podcast audio:







In this episode of The Ayn Rand Institute Podcast, Ben Bayer and Robertas Bakula discuss the growing antitrust threats to business freedom and the anti-American ideas behind them.



Among the topics covered:




* How antitrust measures under the Biden and Trump administrations have threatened business across the board;



* Why Trump is enforcing antitrust laws so aggressively;



* How antitrust chief Gail Slater distorts facts to rationalize business persecution;



* Why antitrust laws betray America’s founding principles;



* Why “America First” is a collectivist slogan for protectionism;



* Why accusations of politicization wrongly assume that antitrust laws can be enforced objectively;



* How the mixed economy breeds pressure group warfare, and what business should do about it.




Recommended in this podcast are Ayn Rand’s essays “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” and “The Pull Peddlers,” Onkar Ghate and Don Watkins’ book Profit Without Apology: The Need to Stand Up for Business, ARI’s “Open Letter to Google’s Sundar Pichai and Team,” and Marek Michulka’s “Antitrust Criminalizes Google’s Productive Virtue.”



The podcast was recorded on August 21, 2025 and posted on September 4, 2025. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.